2019-08-21 - Fumbling Towards Ecstasy

She has been out of pocket for most of the day.

Smartphone reception isn't the best in Firefly Forest and the drive back to her residence hadn't been at all straightforward. Captain de la Vega's off-roading truck has had to clear through brush and thicket before hitting the pavement, and set on the road back to the Reede Family's old Tudor-style home. He had been kind enough, also, to assist her with unpacking the small arsenal she had brought, to return it to the vaulted room in which her father keeps his private collection, and makes the note to give every firearm within a thorough cleaning before returning to her own residence. It would be a separate trip, sometime later, another thing to add on an increasingly lengthy to-do list that she keeps inside of her head.

It's a strange day, at least weather-wise; one of those times in which it can't seem to decide whether to be sunny or rainy, and has elected not to choose midway through its hours. For most of it, Earth's life-giving star burned brightly over the horizon, pennants of light refracted by sheets of water and leaving Gray Harbor's rougher surroundings striated with spectrums of color, glimpsed now and then, if one stops to look. But it's close to the early dinner hour now, and the warmth of the earlier deluge has reduced to a mere trickle - but Summers have longer days and the skies remain a shade of pale indigo when the Chevy truck finally pulls up and deposits her on the docks leading to her residence. The Surprise beckons the eye, a gleaming white knife amidst rougher, worn-looking vessels - fewer now, these days. Tourist season is just about over.

Hiking boots thump on creaky wood as Isabella wanders back to her place, dark brown hair pulled in a loose loop and damp from her forays outside, clad in cargo pants that sling low on the hips and a black tanktop that buttons down the front. Her jacket is pulled through one arm, her shoulder taken up by a backpack. A baseball cap sits on her head, though it provides little respite from the drizzle that continues to fall, aviators removed and hooked in the front of her bodice. From a distance, dressed as she is, fresh out of whatever adventure she had decided to embark upon today, she actually looks like Lara Croft - albeit woefully, significantly less well-endowed.

Alexander has gotten through most of whatever snit he'd gotten into at the meeting with the Addingtons and after - one of the lesser known benefits of walking everywhere (aside from thighs of steel) is that it gives you time to burn out aggression, and so he even slept, and managed to avoid offending Isolde or Luigi in the bargain. His day has been caught up in doing certain other things, but as the day comes to a close, he finds himself on the coastal side of the town, and he's decided to swing by the Surprise. As a, you know, surprise.

The surprise is rather on him, and he laughs, quietly, seeing that the houseboat is dark. He knocks anyway, just in case. But since they weren't scheduled to meet, he doesn't break in. Instead, he just turns, and looks as if he's about to slip into darkening evening. Then there's the sound of boots on wood, and his eyes turn in that direction, alert and wary. Then a smile spills across his face as he recognizes the approaching figure. "Isabella." He moves in that direction. "You look like you've been on an adventure of some sort."

It is, indeed, a surprise when she espies a taller figure moving out of the threshold of the boat and hit the docks outside of it. Green-gold eyes widen, seeing Alexander emerge from the shadows, his ill temper from yesterday banished and that smile on a haggard, but handsome face that could be just as expressive as hers, if he would only let himself.

It could be the strain - the outing with the Captain was not without its tension, surrounded by memories of her brother and the long-denied taste of the power sitting in the well of her torn-asunder self, and the only reason that the two of them had managed to escape cutting one another with their jagged edges is because Ruiz had the restraint not to go for the throat. But seeing the investigator alive, expression brimming with the uncomplicated happiness (was he happy? was that joy? it was something) at seeing her, stopping by so he could, stirs the more volatile parts of her, reaching through her ribcage to twist the relentlessly beating engine within and leaving it with that faint, bittersweet ache.

"Alexander!" His presence quickens her steps, eyes like emerald embers veined with gold in the dark with how they brighten. She almost does it at that quick approach - she almost leaps on him, leaving him to catch her.

...but she remembers herself in the last minute and she stops. Frustration, visible and self-deprecating, flits past that sunkissed mien. The aborted urge remains in her aura, restless and thrumming when he meets her halfway. "Out in the forest," she says, rendered slightly breathless from her quick trot. "The Captain and I went shooting and after the last night's annoyances, I thought I could use the opportunity to blow off some steam." The truth, but not the whole truth. "I wanted to see how he was recovering. He's still moving slowly, but he's doing fine." A wry twist to her mouth. "He's his usual cantankerous self so he must be."

Searching his face, her smile returns. "How are you feeling?"

Alexander's arms come up and out, with hardly a flinch, and when she draws herself up short, he's the one who closes the distance and if she allows, gathers her in his arms for a warm embrace. He dips his head and...sniffs. "That would be why you smell like gunpowder, I'm guessing." A flicker of his inherent distaste for firearms, but the smile is equally genuine. "It seems to have agreed with you. I'm glad. And yes - the Captain helped me attempt some eggplant lasagna the other night, so I had a chance to see how he was healing, myself." His eyes flicker with some complex emotions. "He's being suspiciously helpful." It's more fond than not.

At her last question, he grimaces. "I...behaved badly. I'm not going to apologize to the Addingtons, because with the exception of Erin, I don't believe I like them very much. But I should not have interrupted the proceedings as I did. I've had some time to think - and, actually, to ask the Captain for a favor regarding my family, so. I am feeling somewhat more stabilized." A shrug, as if defining himself by stable or not stable is an ordinary sort of thing.

He would scent the day on her - minerals from freshly turned earth, the mingled floral notes of the forest and traces of gunpowder and cordite; the rain on her skin and hints of cigarette smoke. Something else also, more undefined and unable to be placed, but reminiscent of the traces he had experienced in the first and only time he'd felt around her mind to connect with that volatile, outer surface of her psyche. The last is nothing that he could pick up by his nose alone, helped along by his formidable mental abilities and how attuned he really is with the shine.

The embrace, too, is a surprise, and it only triggers more of Isabella's overall responsiveness when he allows himself to touch her. Slender arms wind around him, fingers curling loosely into the back of his shirt and she sinks herself further into the warmth and solidity he provides, her face turning into his shoulder and lashes shuttering. Her reply to him tightens in a squeeze, her earlier restlessness mollified, somewhat, by his affection - not completely, but somewhat.

"...you made lasagna? Wow," she says, her voice muffled, but teasing, tilting her head back finally to look at the turbulence of his own near-dark eyes at the mention of Ruiz. "How did that turn out? Is being the next Gordon Ramsay in your future?" Mischief plays on the line of her mouth, flares in those evergreen depths. "Or are you homeless now?" There are equal odds with the experiment either being a marginal success or an unmitigated disaster.

The grimace earns a more serious look, but her smile doesn't waver. Her face tilts instead, to lightly, gingerly, press the warmth of her mouth against the hollow of his cheek if he allows. She rarely ever initiates, and with good reason, but his ready embrace and the fact that he'd come to surprise her has her unwinding those reluctant shackles to further indulge in the moment. Because she can't help it. She can't.

"Let's get out of the rain, first," she murmurs. "And you can tell me more about all of that." And now she makes a face. "I should change anyway, I'm not exactly dressed for company."

With that, and with visible reluctance, she starts to ease away from the sturdy circle he makes around her, and moves towards the houseboat's interior.

Alexander laughs, the sound barely audible but felt easily through the amused tremors of his body against hers. "Hardly. It's edible, and it will be better next time, but - I burned the garlic and apparently did not do the assembly correctly. But, in my defense, the Captain was distracting me." He leans into the kiss with a sigh, hands tightening on her back - but carefully, mindful of her own recovery. He tilts his head back, letting the rain fall into his face. "Mm. Yes. I suppose we should. Although I admit," his voice drops to a playful, husky register, "I'm not entirely opposed to you in wet clothes, Isabella."

He lets his hands drop when she eases away, and falls in to follow behind her, like some unexpectedly friendly stray found in the street, his gaze swinging from one side to another like, even here, he might be ambushed or tricked. Despite that, some tension seems to be eased within him. He says, "I asked the Captain to encourage my parents to leave town for a bit. He said he would try."

I'm not entirely opposed to you in wet clothes.

"Oh, good," Isabella says with a laugh. "Because I was starting to wonder." She wasn't. "...and that definitely can't be helped almost every day." He'd feel her smile against his cheek, followed by a lower, quieter: "And you haven't even seen me in a swimsuit yet."

A hand reaches up, to delicately push a lock of those curling bangs away from his brow with the touch of her fingertips, before they move.

The coast is inundated with cooler climes, and the warmth the Surprise's interior provides is evident immediately upon stepping inside. After a pause so Isabella can get rid of her muddy hiking boots and leaving it outside in a shallow plastic basin with a bit of water (presumably to remove grit and sand off footwear, and keep the residence free of such things), the door closes securely behind them, and the interior is lit up - just a few lamps, leaving the silhouettes within in a subtler glow.

"Start up some coffee?" she asks over her shoulder.

She tables the rest until she gets herself settled, though she doesn't waste much time in doing that either. Clothes gathered from her room, the bathroom door latches shut, with every intention to scrub the day's grime off her skin. She doesn't take too long there, that familiar cloud of steam released once the ten minute shower is done, stepping back into the main living area. Her hair remains loose and damp, spilling free - the tanktop is a deep burgundy red this time, with flat white buttons in front, and a pair of jeans shorts.

"How was the Captain distracting you, exactly?" she wonders, sinking into the couch and the look of her inquisitive. Though news about his parents forces a more serious expression to enter her overall easygoing facade. "And that's a good idea," she murmurs. "I hope they listen." That does remind her, however, and she tilts her head at him. "I know your mother's a retired nurse, but what about your father? Is he also a health care professional?"

Alexander slips his own work boots off at the door - walking through the on-again-off-again rain has made them liable to track into the carpet, and he's clearly aware of that. He puts them off to the side, and pads through the living area (not quite familiar, but no longer quite so strange and likely to set off his nervousness as it once was), making just a noise of agreement before he starts making coffee. He starts humming to himself as he works, and casually snoops in a few of her cabinets, checking on the state of food there since the last time he visited.

That, at least, stops when he hears the shower go off, and by the time she emerges, he's got two mugs out, and is pouring some fresh, hot coffee for each of them. His hair and clothes are damp, the t-shirt clinging to him a bit, while his bangs are plastered unheeded against his forehead and temples. His smile is warm at her.

With the question, it becomes a little lopsided. "He had a request, and some questions. In return for the cooking instruction." He looks down at the mugs, then brings them over to the couch, offering one to her before he sinks down beside her. "Dad? No." Amusement flickers. "You actually probably remember him. Coach Clayton at Addington High. Or you may not have had him for any classes. And I don't think you were on the football team." He flashes a grin at her.

She is, at the very least, responsible when it comes to stocking up the cupboards and the pantry, though the items within are mostly non-perishable, forever following her father's military inclinations when it comes to keeping a residence supplied. But considering her own lack of cooking skills, the refrigerator and freezer are full of things that can be easily prepared - vegetables to cut up and make a salad out of, sandwich meat for the bread, and fruit and cheese and juice. In spite of her lack of love for sweet things, Isabella seems to make an unfailing exception for fruit, given its nutritional value.

That ache returns when she watches him making himself at home in her kitchen - not just because he is there, occupying a usually empty space, but also the way he looks. Rainwater on his hair and skin, the way the outside damp forces fabric to cling to his broad shoulders and his lean frame and the smile he flashes at her whenever he sees her again. For a moment, there's a pause when he hands her one of the mugs, simply looking at him and halfway lost in the experience of him and this. A thing she's never tried before, never had before.

He has that tortured, handsome older guy thing going for him. Always has, Isolde's voice giggles somewhere, traitorously, at the back of her head.

Isabella clears her throat, retrieves the cup and looks away under the guise of hunting through a small pile of folded laundry nearby, producing a small towel. This, she offers to him. "Don't get sick on me," she tells him with a laugh.

His grin earns a widening of her eyes. "That's right!" she breathes, settling next to him, close enough to feel his warmth, her body turned and long, bare legs pulled up, never one to sit in ceremony in her own home. "God, you'll have to forgive me. It's been over a decade since I've been to high school. Retired now, too? Or is he still working?" She takes a sip of her coffee. "And no, definitely not, though I've played rugby for fun. And I was in the girl's basketball team in high school." She pauses. "...and volleyball...and track...and swimming..." Too brash, she told him. Too competitive. There's something slightly sheepish as she looks at him there.

She squints at him slowly and then leans back. "Were you in the football team, then?" she wonders. He mentioned not being able to fit in almost his entire life, but that doesn't really mean he was utterly devoid of the ability to compete. "Or was that too much of a conflict of interest?"

Alexander watches her watch him, his eyes dark and curious at the meaning behind that long pause as the cup is handed off. He doesn't pry, and when she scrounges up the towel, he takes it with a sheepish sort of smile, and gently towels off his hair. "I'm pretty sturdy. Walking as much as I do, in this town, you get largely immune to the effects of rain on your immune system. Or so I tell myself, anyway." A wink at her as he settles in. He seems comfortable being close to her, leaning into that warmth from her body.

Her widened eyes and exclamation make him smile. "There's no reason for you to associate the two of us, really. I wasn't in school the same time you were, and my father didn't exactly announce the relationship." Her list of teams draws raised eyebrows. "Mmm. I can only imagine that they were happy to have someone with as much passion as you have. I bet you practiced like your life depended on it." His voice is teasing, playful. "I wasn't, no. He tried to get me to, but I'm not really built for it. And don't enjoy it. Between that and widespread resistance to the idea," he shrugs. "I wasn't really involved in anything, in high school. Spent most of my time following cops around or trying to sneak into crime scenes."

There's a moment where his expression changes, clearly thinking over the differences in their high school experiences. He clears his throat, takes a sip of his coffee. "At any rate, I've also taken the liberty of contacting Dr. Kosimar. She's got the best backing in the occult I know, and I thought she might have some insight on the William situation. As it turns out, she does, and has invited me to an attempt to contact Gohl's spirit."

I'm pretty sturdy.

Lashes lower, that feline look returning and subjecting him, for a change, with that slow once over, followed by quiet words threaded with the most delicate intimacy: "I know."

He'd sense her smile more than see it, when Isabella presses her lips against the rim of her cup, green-gold eyes crinkling in the corners. But that sense of comfort, this growing ease around her presence, is one that she doesn't miss either and she moves, the better to take mutual advantage. He isn't the only one who is skin-hungry, though hers is less about a self-imposed isolation as it is a consequence of her overall refusal not to settle for less than something or someone she wants, rendered all the more severe by a predominantly transient lifestyle. Both legs extend, to gently drape across his lap, her shoulder pressed against the back rest of the couch; the better to directly look at his eyes.

Fingers cradle the warm cup close to her face as she listens, unfailingly interested in these small and seemingly insignificant details of his life, playing catch-up on the things past his overall reputation as a persistent thorn in the GHPD's side. His teasing about incessant practice has her laughing, if not just because it is absurdly accurate. "I had to be the best, always," she tells him. "It didn't make me too many friends, I wasn't as popular as my brother, but the ones I did make certainly lasted." He would know who she was referring to without even speaking his name, and it's no exaggeration, when she and Byron can just pick up where they left off despite eleven years of no contact.

"When was the first time you did that?" she asks, her head tilting to rest against the backrest, dark chocolate tendrils of her hair clinging to her throat and cheek at the angle it adopts. "May I ask what drove you to it, from the start?"

He brings up Minerva, and she blinks at the sudden veering off to a different track. "She mentioned that in my meeting with her," she tells him. "Before I left, that I could call upon her any time if I needed an expert in the occult. Would you like me to come with you? She was asking about the asylum in the Veil." Now that this mysterious Carver figure has attached the name to it, it's hard not to use it. It's shorter, and catchier than Over There or The Other Place.

Alexander's smile takes on a different air entirely as that feline look comes into her eyes. He doesn't look away under the slow once over, but instead makes a low, pleased humming sound, then says, "Are you sure? Any assertion really should be tested thoroughly before it's accepted as knowledge, Miss Reede." His own gaze slips to her torso. "Once your stitches are out, anyway." Dry humor there, his face carrying fond and frustrated memory.

When she extends her legs, he doesn't flinch away. There's tension, an indrawn breath, but not a rejection. In fact, his non-coffee hand drops to her legs and begins rubbing them gently, not quite a massage, nor a caress, but holding elements of both.

"I've always preferred quality over quantity, myself. When it comes to friends," Alexander says, breezily, as if he hadn't been lacking in both in his life in that particular area. "I'm glad you made good ones." A quick smile; whatever issues he might have with Byron, he's clearly not going to even try to critique the friendship the two share. "Crime scenes? Cops? Ah. Well. It's not..." he pauses to take a sip. "You know my abilities have been strong from a young age. But not controlled. Which means I picked up a lot of unfortunate things, as a young child. And it's Gray Harbor. A lot of people get hurt. Killed. Trying to figure out why, and how to stop it, I guess, was my way of trying to process what I felt." He shrugs. "And I'm good at it. I enjoy it. Knowing, solving. At times in my life, it's been the only thing I felt good at." A quick smile, dismissing his earlier trauma. "But it's like that, isn't it? You have an affinity for something. You could have done anything, but picked archaeology. Why?"

"I...want, yes. But I don't know if you should. Considering that Gohl targeted your mother, and we still don't know exactly what his beef is with the Baxters." There's a grimace about the mention of the asylum, but nothing more on that line.

Once your stitches are out anyway.

Isabella says nothing to that, but that feline smile only grows, half-hidden by her cup and holding his stare there, those fathomless depths meeting her own and finding his mirrored frustrations within. Lips part slightly, warm, soft, the pearlined edges of her teeth clipping delicately on the rim of her ceramic mug. Tension strings between their faces, the perpendicular positioning of their bodies, but she does nothing save shift her outermost leg on his lap, bending a knee, to better follow the absent trace of rough fingertips along impossibly soft skin, treated with the vanity of a young woman who knows very well what saltwater can do to one's complexion without care, supple and smooth; the wondrous effects of skin care technology and innovations in the twenty-first century.

Her attention, itself, tends to mirror aspects of him that make him what he is - silent, but intense, the world narrowed down to extraneous details, discarded as such, and leaving him in the middle of a spotlight on an empty stage. There's a certain sympathy there, when he depicts his early life, that heated look fading to a gentler note - not just out of care, but the fact that she understands, and in ways that she finds difficult to explain. "I'm glad you found your calling early," she tells him simply after that. "I just wish you didn't have to do it alone." She had her twin, and he had been a genius, whereas Alexander had no such bond in his childhood. "I think it's made you resilient, and stronger than I think you even know, yourself. But those struggles come with a price." Her eyes lower to her coffee. "As with everything to do with it," she murmurs, before taking a sip, lashes obscuring whatever can be found in those emerald-gold storms.

His question about archaeology has her lifting her head, grinning broadly. "I always wanted to travel," she tells him. "I read so much as a child, I spent as much time indoors as I did outside. And the Admiral..." Her grandfather on her paternal side, presently living in Annapolis. "...would often talk about history while I was on his knee, how us Reedes tended to sail far away. Exploration is in the blood, and my brother and I always had that, we just focused on different worlds. Though I suppose..." There's a rueful smile in spite of her glance away. "...certain occurrences in my later life have pushed me to dedicate my life in finding lost things." After a moment, a thought, she tilts her head back then and laughs. "Therapy would have been cheaper. Christ, all those student loans."

She takes another pull of her coffee, eyes moving to meet his. "I understand," she says quietly, but directly - determinedly. "But maybe I should for precisely that reason. I'm capable of enduring more than I look, Alexander. If there's a possibility where we could bait him and leave him open, we should."

"Ultimately, we do most things alone, Isabella. And certain types of resilience, yes. Certain types of strength." Alexander shrugs easily, his hand using the opportunity in her bent leg to slide down and caress the back of her knee, just firmly enough not to be ticklish. Unless she's terribly ticklish, anyway. His expression warms further as she goes on, talking about her own childhood; he drinks in the information, and the way she tells it, like he draws real sustenance from it. "But admit it; what you purchased with the student loans was a lot more fun than years of therapy would have been."

There's a noise from him at the rest. Not quite an agreement. Not quite a disagreement. He takes another drink of coffee, savoring the beans of a higher quality than he's usually able to afford, before he says, "I don't doubt your resilience. But I don't want to bait him. Or attack him. Stop him, yes. But I want to hear his perspective on events. Understand his motive, and see what might quiet him." His eyes flick back to her, a bit wary. "I understand your desire for vengeance, Isabella. I do. But I can't help but remember that all the bones really wanted was to be buried. If we had done that, would he have gone back to sleep? Is there a part of him that doesn't...want to be doing these things?""

The kneading gestures he makes against her knee is comforting also, having spent most of the day low on the ground with a rifle braced against her shoulder. There's a quiet, pleased sound from her, cup moving sideways so she could tilt forward and rest her chin against the hard, outer curve of his nearest shoulder. Lashes lid, before they close completely, for a moment barricading his view of the arresting color within her irises.

Her laugh is low afterwards, cracking open a single eye at him, his handsome profile reflected within it. "I do love my work," Isabella confesses, as if it is a thing that anyone couldn't tell after a five minute conversation with her. "It's a different world down there, in the deep. It's silent save for your breath and whatever sounds travel that far from the surface, or what emanate from underneath the deeper layers. The colors...the secrets. I wish you're able to try it, just once."

The idea of talking to a murderous serial killer to understand his motivations has her making a faint face. "You said it yourself, William Gohl murdered those people, even if the Addingtons somehow had something to do with it," she points out in a murmur. "I don't particularly know what wisdom is there to follow the whims of a man like that. My only regret in the end is that the act of destroying the pieces I had hurt you." And it shows, it threads over her contralto, rendered husky by their proximity. He has absolved her of the guilt, but she carries it anyway, another stone on her back in the network of sins that she has buried deep within herself.

"I want to be there to watch your back," is what she says finally, because of course she would. After a pause, as if thinking back, both her eyes open again, her tilted face shifting so she could look at him. "Though he kept looking at me strangely in the dream. It wasn't anything hostile, just...baffled. Confused."

Alexander by no means objects to her chin on his shoulder, and in fact turns his head so that he lean it gently against hers, enjoying the sound of her low, husky laugh so close to him. He relaxes bit by bit as she describes the world under the sea. "I'd like to try it one day. See what it's like down there, with you. It sounds very alien. But not in a bad way."

"I don't argue his culpability," he murmurs, in turn. "But I grow to suspect the story is more complex than we have been led to believe. Margaret Addington's complete antipathy for the Baxters, for example. Neither you nor I, nor our families, has ever had any burning desire to destroy the town, I think?" A quirk of an eyebrow towards her. "And if the Addingtons know, really /know/ about the asylum - then they're affiliated with the dolorphages to some degree. They know what goes on there. Who it serves." A sigh. "Which doesn't absolve people like Lindon Baxter or William Gohl of their sins, either. But I'm well into 'a pox on both their houses' territory. Which means I need testimony from all interested parties to start putting together who is lying about what." A shift of frustration.

Then another nuzzle with the side of his face. "Then maybe you wouldn't set him off. Thomas Addington was looking at me a little that way, too. Maybe you reminded Gohl of someone, in the same way I assume I reminded Thomas of Gohl."

The further she sinks into him, and he sinks into her, the more distracted Isabella becomes from her coffee. Absent fingers set it aside, the ceramic bottom of it finding the coffee table with a quiet clack. Imbued with its warmth, the tips of those long academic's digits reach upwards to trace the shape of his cheek - light, like hummingbird's wings, fleeting as they chase the shape of his face and slipping down the hard line of his unshaven jaw. With her eyes almost completely closed, she does this blindly, charting her own course over the features of him that she could reach, forming her own map of the terrains of Alexander Clayton within her long memories. In the end, it is less out of passionate desire, though threads of that do exist because she never doesn't want him, but she indulges in this rarely encountered circumstance when her own brand of intense, affectionate devotion is free to be let loose and roam as it will.

"We'll take that in stride," she murmurs, about diving, turning her face to return his nuzzling with her own, less of an active kiss as it is her lips just being there when she returns the lean. "I was scared, too, the first time I tried it. My father used to tell me that my eyes were so wide when we practiced in the shallows that he thought he was going to hold my hand the entire time we were down there." Amusement slips through that bedroom contralto. "That lasted for about five seconds, I think."

She falls quiet there, when their discussion about the mystery continues; he would garner from her lack of speech that she agrees there, that there's more to the story than what Margaret Addington had imparted. "In my personal experience, when someone's too quick to harp about the sacrifices they made for the greater good, chances are there's something shady underneath." This is a soft drawl that somehow doesn't lose its acerbic quality, her own world-weariness there. He'd feel coils of tension over her legs, when he talks about the shadows. "If that wasn't apparent before, Hyacinth's experience in the saw mill would confirm it," she continues, pushing the words from around the knot threatening to gather into the back of her throat. "I don't think any one bloodline is innocent, at this point, and we still don't know what that photograph was about. I was telling Ronnie the other day - two Baxter women, two Addington women and two Whitehouse women reads like a strange, twisted formula to me."

Maybe she did, but the idea doesn't make her uneasiness go away. Her hand curves to cup the side of his face, easing her own away so she could meet his eyes, her thumb sweeping over the ridge of his cheekbone. "I hope it's not one like of those cases in the movies," she tells him, good humor playing visibly over the line of her mouth. "Where we find out that I'm the spitting image of Elizabeth Baxter." She follows the naming conventions, at least and it wouldn't be the first time she wondered whether her mother's choice was deliberate - Isabella is the Spanish form for Elizabeth.

Searching his face for a moment, she sighs. "We won't know unless we try," she tells him, eyes half-closing as she examines him from under the shadows of her lamps and lashes. "...do you know much about Minerva's background?"

Alexander finishes his own coffee, before setting it aside, as if loathe to waste it, for all that he mostly seems to view eating and drinking as mechanical tasks, mere fuel for the work that he does with his body rather than pleasurable experiences themselves. But after he drains the cup, he shifts to put it down beside where Isabella rests hers, and he settles back against her body, and the warm exploration of her touch. He slips an arm around her, and she can feel his mouth curve upwards as her fingers brush near it, the warmth of his breath washing over her fingers. He doesn't make any attempt to escalate the contact, just letting himself enjoy it.

"That would make sense. To be scared." His voice is dry. "A completely hostile environment, where your only protection is an apparatus built by frail and fragile humanity, and if it catastrophically fails, who knows if you could possibly reach safety in time?" There's a long pause, then a soft laugh. "But I may simply be used to thinking in worst case scenarios."

"I think you're right about that." A simple support of her world-weary observation. "We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows." The poem is quoted in a sing-song, amused and frustrated all at the same time. He squeezes her legs when there's that tension. "I'm not sure about Hyacinth. About Thomas deliberately causing her harm. He's a drunkard, and has been for many years. It's entirely possible he just wasn't paying attention. Not every tragedy is malice and...I don't like the man, but he seemed genuinely devastated about his role in the murders. I wish I'd had the courage to read him. Read them both. But did you see how much Margaret stands out?" A soft huff of air. "I feel like she'd have slapped my brain so hard it would have rattled."

A completely hostile environment, where your only protection is an apparatus built by frail and fragile humanity, and if it catastrophically fails, who knows if you could possibly reach safety in time?

"I know." That inner fire lights up her eyes, Isabella's mouth curling upwards in a smile laden with the intoxicated excitement of a professional adrenaline junkie. "It's amazing."

She can't help but be continuously surprised, deep down, at the changes in him compared to how he normally engages with others outside of the spaces they create for themselves, the easy way he gathers her up with the sling of one arm and the obvious savouring of her fingers' light explorations. He almost looks different also, when his defensive chrysalis has been shed to reveal almost another person underneath the paranoia and dark, grim, gritty determination to save his hometown from the shadows attempting to consume it. His midnight eyes are alive, bright in spite of their color, threatening her constantly with their ability to swallow her whole, and the way he grins accentuates the boyish qualities to him that others rarely see. It leaves her absently tracing the shape of his mouth, to imprint the memory of it against her skin.

Everything ends, eventually. She knows this better than anyone, when her life's work is so closely tied to whole civilizations and empires that have come and gone. But with it comes the certain appreciation that there are some inevitabilities in the world that don't matter, so long as a thing existed. Isabella's expression softens, brimming with the words she doesn't say.

I will never have this ever again.

Her hand lowers, her arm folding along her torso, and she tilts her head to rest fully flushed against his shoulder, now that he's put an arm around her, breathing in the scents she associates with him - paper, ink and coffee, traces of that undefined, masculine quality unique to him, and the touch of ozone left on his personal field, that she can sense despite the lack of effort in doing so.

"I meant what she said, about how there were things in the mill," she murmurs, her breath absorbed into the collar of his shirt. "I don't think Thomas did it either, for whatever else the Addingtons are guilty of, they're like any other rich, influential family - they might not all get along, but they'll do anything and everything to protect the family name and those tied to it."

She falls quiet, her mind roving back to the frustrating meeting and how Margaret Addington burned like the sun, even in the midst of a collection of bright lights. As far as potential goes, Byron and Hyacinth were faint, cold, like distant stars. Alexander and Erin, filled with both power and skill, were like galaxies of their own. But the matriarch of the family was something else. She tries not to think about her own and there's a shift to further sink into him, turning her face into the cradle he makes and closes her eyes, remembering the day - of how embracing it feels like coming home, the look of stunned amazement on Captain de la Vega's face and all of the uncomfortable questions that came afterwards.

"If I had your talents, nothing would've stopped me from trying," she quips; an exaggeration in the end, but something she says because it would be just like her. "But they were already irritated by our presence there, and you said it yourself, there's no use aggravating them further. They have enough influence to get in the way of any of our future endeavors if we got them angry enough." She buries a small laugh against him. "Even if the first thing I did upon looking at her face was figuratively lift my boot and kick the doors down."

"Amazing." Alexander sounds...well, amazed. More at her enthusiasm for it than the idea of it. But it's fond, too, and he can't resist bending his head to place a kiss on her forehead. "You are a blazing fire," he murmurs. "I quite enjoy when you kick things down, you know." He caresses her hair, twining his fingers through it, careful not to pull or hurt. "You race towards every danger. Except when it comes to using your powers." He doesn't make it a question. Just a quiet observation, but with the weight of all the things he knows she hasn't said behind him.

"If it had been just me, I probably would have," Alexander admits, quietly. "But I didn't want to trigger something that might have caused difficulty for the rest of you." Until he lost his temper and did it anyway. His body shifts, mouth turning down and muscles tensing as he remembers just how angry he was - and still is - about the whole situation."

When he says the word, it isn't sarcastic; genuine admiration is there, never one to hold back in the manner that she does. Isabella's eyes drift closed, a quiet, content murmur escaping her when his warm mouth finds her forehead.

"I burn too hot, too quickly," the archaeologist tells him with a quiet laugh. "It's as much a blessing as it is a curse." Perhaps that's why she's drawn to water so much - a balancing element, though ultimately a poor stand-in for the one she had for most of her life. "But I count my blessings that you don't find it off-putting. Especially coming from a certain someone who was very serious about telling me about how he doesn't particularly like intensity..." Her voice trails off there, lilting and teasing, and a single eye cracks open to look at him, the devil in her frolicking in a field of sunlit green.

Except when it comes to using your powers.

Her stare moves away from him then, fixed somewhere at the hollow of his throat, and the silence ticks by - in time with her heartbeat, and his own. But when she finally remarks upon that, it is soft, tenuous in the manner that only scratches upon the surface of the pure, unbridled terror that she tries so desperately to keep off her blatant confidence. His touch helps, the way he twines her dark hair in his fingers, the way he looks at her. She swallows through the knot. "You told me before that you get lost all the time," she murmurs, finally lifting her eyes to meet his own, because she can't not - her pride wouldn't allow her to do any less. "I do, also. But in a different way."

She can taste his anger, when he remembers in turn, detecting those scalding brands like hot iron braiding tightly across his shoulders and down his chest. She doesn't bother resisting when she leans forward, lips brushing lightly over the corner of his frown.

"Between you and me, I also like it when you get hot under the collar," she banters, lightly. "But in all seriousness, you had every right to be angry and while I know you worry, I promise you that you don't have to worry too much about us." Not just her, but Erin, Byron and the rest. "They were being obtuse, and too comfortable with their place in the rungs of the city." Her eyes half-close. "So let's see if we can't try shaking the ladder a little."

"Intensity of emotion is fine, unless it's hostile," Alexander says, after a long moment. "Surprises and intense situations are usually threats. I don't like things that threaten me." A hesitation. "I don't particularly like how I react when threatened. It's useful. But it doesn't gain me many, any, friends. So I tend to avoid it. People can be difficult," he admits, quietly.

He falls silent when she looks away, down to his throat. He doesn't push or force the issue, but strokes her with both hands, calm and comforting - as much as either of those two adjectives can ever apply to him. When she looks up, he meets her eyes square. "Would you like to talk about it?" he asks.

Her brush of lips turns the frown briefly into a smile, and he's quick to return the kiss, although it's gentle rather than passionate. At least, until she makes that quip, which he replies to by making a nip at her lower lip. "Mm. You're a revolutionary at heart, Miss Reede," he accuses, playfully.

"I think you have every right to defend yourself, and your own," Isabella says quietly, her innate stubbornness manifesting there as she looks at him seriously. "I know you don't like how you react when you're threatened, but I hope that you never stop. As for people being difficult..." Mirth returns, brows arching upwards. "Yes, they can be, though I'm happy that you would make certain exceptions with regard to the connections you choose to keep."

His offer is left hanging, at least for a moment, the young woman simply watching his face, elects to yield, first, to the softness of the moment when he turns his head to press his mouth against hers a little more fully. The playful nip gets a grin, faint against his own. "Look," she murmurs, turning her head to part her lips against his. "Someone needs to keep them on their toes, it's more interesting that way."

There's a brief moment of hesitation, before she shifts. Her movements are slow, unfolding her legs off his lap, but only so she could turn her body and situate herself there, instead - but only if he allows, but should he, it would leave her knees bracketing his hips, settling on him in a loose straddle. By all rights, it would be a precursor to more passionate interludes, especially when she reaches for him this way, leaving her long fingers to gently push through the riot of dark, half-curls that adorn his head. But the way she looks down at him, eclipsing his face with her own shadow, one side of his face carved with a sliver of light from the nearby lamp, is soft and solemn, the dark falls of her hair curtaining the sides of his face and her own - as if to barricade the ensuing conversation at the exclusion of all others; their own private confessional.

She hesitates, her jaw working softly to find the words. "It's cost me before," she says, her expression twisting faintly - remembered agony, simmering frustration of being too terrified to even talk about what all of it means. But she struggles, visibly. Tries, because she can't not, even as that old remembered fear twists down her spine, shivers that register against his body. "I..."

Her expression yields then, hesitant but permeated with sorrow as she meets his eyes, her fingers tracing the sides of his face tenderly. "...oh, Alexander," she whispers, because she knows. This thing that he loves, that he can't do with many because not many would allow it, and the fact that she might not be able to despite the desire twists at her more than it is justifiably bearable. Her eyes slip shut, her words so soft it's only because they're close together that he can hear her.

"If you ever dove into me, I don't know if you'd ever be able to find me."

"I'm glad that you feel that way," Alexander says, in return, quite serious. "Because I'm pretty difficult as well. So. We can try being difficult together. And see what happens." It's tentative, searching her face in return, as if he can't actually imagine her - or maybe anyone - agreeing to such an arrangement. Although the tentativeness is softened with amusement at her humor, her easy rebuttal.

And then she's moving. And he's tensing up, visibly, as she comes to straddle him, Alexander's eyes widening for a moment, then narrowing. Not knowing what to expect, he moves his hands away, letting them hover to either side of her until she's settled in place and her hands are in his hair. He can't help it, the soft noise he makes as her fingers wind their way through his still slightly damp hair. His hands find her waist, careful of bandages and healing areas.

And as he picks up on the echoes of her fear, he strokes her back, her sides, his rough hands as gentle as he can make them, his gaze not wavering from her face in this private little space. Her words bring a sadness. He doesn't hide it, he rarely hides anything. "I think I would. You're too vital, too much fire, to be hidden or lost entire, Isabella. But you know that I'll never demand that. Anything like that." A pause. "I just worry that this fear will end up hurting you, if you need what you have, but can't use it."

We can try being difficult together.

Her potential is a radiant and overwhelming thing, and even as his body cradles her lighter and more slender own, she feels like a star on the verge of collapse. But Isabella is years divorced from those childhood years of discovery and exploration, the wholehearted embrace she had of her gifts. There is no way in the world that she can penetrate Alexander's defenses, not with how masterfully he has cultivated his own, and so even if she wanted to read his mind and discover what he prefers, she wouldn't be able to do so - but she can observe. She is ridiculously perceptive and she doesn't miss that sound he makes when her touch finds his hair; it inspires her to sink her digits further into that mass, luxuriating in its damp softness, rolling her thumbs gently against his temples. Unable to help herself, her mouth finds his forehead.

The way his hands roam over her body in an effort to comfort her wouldn't trigger any hints of pain. His fingers would not catch on bandages, and despite a challenging day outside, her movements are unencumbered, making it clear that her wounds are fully healed - at least, the physical ones are. But he's able to stroke some of the tension out of her, roll it out of the shallow channel of her spine.

"You don't understand," she says, finally, quietly. But it's not an accusation; from her tone, she is fully aware that she doesn't blame anyone for it because she doesn't say anything. "I want it more than anything. It's just..." She feels it again, the urge to reach inside of herself, finding nothing but the space Isidore used to occupy - the reminder of spending over a decade living as half a person. "...I don't know if I can deliver." Something rueful enters her expression, her next words dry and self-effacing. "If psychic impotence is a thing, I haven't found the pills for it yet."

Her index and middle fingers rove lightly over his scalp, delicately twining further into his hair. "I'm painfully aware of that," she murmurs. "I am. I know I have to battle it out, eventually. The longer I stay here, the more I remember. The things I could do. The things I used to be able to do so easily, as naturally as taking a breath. But then..." She searches his face. "...I wish I had your grit, in that regard. I can't begin to imagine what you've had to go through before, also, but it hasn't stopped you. You fight, and you win - I'm sure you don't always, but I'll never stop liking that about you. I wish I could say the same, whenever I try."

Alexander closes his eyes in pleasure as her fingers explore his hair, her lips touch his forehead. His hands flatten out against her tank top, as if he has to stop himself from deepening his own explorations. There is a conversation going on here, and it's clear he thinks it's important enough to not be distracted from. Despite the pleased noises that her movements tease from deep in his throat.

"I don't understand," he agrees, quietly. "I've seen your power, Isabella. Been grateful that you weren't trained on it," he adds, with a rough hint of humor, "while impressed at the scope of it. There may be fear. Yes. But I don't think anything about you could ever be impotent." His eyes open, dark and worried as he considers her. "And...I know it's your fight. Whatever form it ends up taking. I know that. But I have nothing but confidence in you. In this or any fight."

I don't think anything about you could ever be impotent.

His faith in her returns that ache, and while Isabella smiles, that lingering sorrow remains. Because he doesn't understand, and she can only blame herself for it - the terror the revisitation would cause, and what he might not find. Would the way he looks at her change, then? She says nothing for a while, immersing herself in this new dimension of his preferences, letting her fingertips trace absent patterns over his scalp, treating him to the occasional tease of the harder curves of her manicure. Her face tilts forward again, to nuzzle his forehead warmly, softly.

"I'll show you one day," she promises quietly, pulling back a little to meet his eyes, smoothing his hair back. "We made a deal in the hospital. It might...it might be easier." But she isn't ready. Not yet. Even remembering that conversation spikes that fear into her belly, spears of white-hot adrenaline to trigger her flight or fight responses. Some part is horrified that she agreed to it, but she is who she is, and she doesn't know how to back down.

Will you really ever will be?

Instead, she straightens up a little bit from her lean, one hand leaving his hair to toy with the top button of her tanktop, her eyes on his and brimming with pain, softness and heat. "Did you mean what you said earlier?" she asks, flicking her thumb over the plastic disc, disengaging it and letting gravity do the work of peeling an inch of fabric off her skin. "About trying to be difficult together?"

Her smile takes on a wicked bent. "Because I think we've officially broken the mold of anything resembling the typical. We've not gone on a single date, we've been hampered from rolling into bed together the first chance we got..." There's laughter in her eyes as she looks down at him. "We've been thrown into the fire together pretty early, well before any of that could happen." Her expression softens, her thumb tracing the upper curve of his ear, fingers massaging circles into the back of his neck. "I'm surprised you still wanted me after all of it." Something dark and impassioned glitters within her eyes, leaning forward to murmur against his mouth. "...though between you and me, it only made me want you more. That thing you do the moment you decide enough is enough. The moment you decide to fix something, and do it."

As close as they are, it's easier to FEEL his nod than see it. "One day. When you feel ready to." He presses a kiss on her cheek, just under her eye, picking up the flickers of her fear as much in the tiny reactions of her body as with his mental abilities. He's not a patient man, but he's forcing himself not to pry, however much he wants to.

When she straightens, he smiles. "I usually do mean what I say, Isabella. Yes. I'd like to try. Whatever that means for us. I don't...exactly know how these things go." A crooked smile. "Hook-ups, yeah. But dating? Not really my forte."

When she murmurs against his mouth, one hand slides up to cup the back of her neck, squeeze it gently. "You have very odd taste in men," he teases back, although the amusement imperfectly hides his awkwardness, his inability to really take a compliment without trying to dismiss or argue about it.

He takes a deep breath, then says, more seriously. "How do you want this to look, Isabella?" A tilt of his head. "It won't do you any good to have gossip that you're dating me. So if you'd prefer to keep things private, or if it's just having sex for fun, then I can do that."

Lashes flutter at the kiss on her cheek; as close as his face is against hers, he'd be spared that half-rueful, half-exasperated look Isabella has on her features. But it's all done out of affection - and more than she would typically admit to anyone.

That crooked smile is new and something squeezes inside of her at glimpsing it, feeling her heartbeat ratchet upwards, her pulse quickening at the side of her throat. The fact that he could affect her so easily with just a subtle change in expression is galling, and she doesn't know whether to hold him close or throw him out at glimpsing it.

"Me neither," she confesses at last, her expression resigned. "I never really stayed in one place for too long, and I was busy in Oxford. I scratched the itch, whenever I felt it, but like I told you before, it's rare that I actually find someone I want out there in the wild. It's...been a while, for me. Even with just the physicality of it all." She smirks and inclines her head at him, her hair tangling in his squeezing fingers. "What, that I would decide to attach myself to someone handsome, intelligent, and incredibly frustrating, with the body of a man who tends to fight for his life six days out of seven, who knows just how I like to be bitten without me telling him? Right. That's strange. It's absolutely baffling."

She pauses from showering those small tidbits of affection at his last words, however, and she pulls back, staring down at him incredulously. Her jaw works, then stops. Then works again. Finally, he'd see her eyes narrow, shifting into green-gold slits and for a moment there, she actually looks furiously, ferociously determined.

Suddenly, she is off his lap, storming towards the back of the boat where her bedroom is, pushing that door open with a slam. She vanishes in its confines.

....a few minutes later, there's a crackle of static, from the broadband radio system in the boat.

"ATTENTION GRAY HARBOR," comes the blare from the speakers.

"MY NAME IS ISABELLA REEDE, AND I'M SEEING ALEXANDER CLAYTON. HE DRIVES ME ABSOLUTELY CRAZY, BUT HE'S HOT, AND SMART, AND FUNNY, AND I WILL OWN THAT FOR AS LONG AS I LIVE. SO IF ANY OF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH IT, I INVITE YOU TO TELL ME, SO YOU CAN KISS MY SIZE EIGHT AFTER I CRAM IT UP YOUR ASS."

Pause.

"THANK YOU, HAVE A NICE DAY."

End transmission.

"It's very strange," Alexander agrees, placidly. "And I begin to suspect you of peculiar levels of bias--"

Annnnnd then she's gone. Alexander's expression is a perfect 'WTF', with his hands just sort of hanging in mid-air while he tries to figure out what he did and how things managed to crash and burn QUITE SO QUICKLY. When she storms off, he rises to his feet, still trying to figure out what question to ask - or whether maybe he should just skulk out of the houseboat and chalk this up to a failure.

Then the words start blaring. Alexander's eyes go wide as saucers. "Oh my god." It's very quiet.

And then, as she goes on, he just loses it. He has to take his seat again because he's laughing so hard that he literally can't stand. Practically rolling with it, the sound filling the living area completely.

There's a thump when she tosses the radio aside, Isabella spinning around, as shameless as can be and works her way back into the living area.

She pretends he's not even laughing, even as he rolls around helplessly on the couch. With those fiercely blazing eyes and that open scowl on her features, the young woman stands over his helpless form, her hands anchored on her hips. She's trying to keep her own laughter at bay. She is. But she's doing her level best to look displeased with him and she ends up disengaging one set of fingers to toss her hair over her shoulder, her chin in that familiar, defiant angle, looking unapologetic and utterly imperious.

"There," she huffs. "It's out. There's no hiding it, I'm sure everyone heard that for miles. And they already know what's going to happen if they do have a problem with it and make the odious mistake of mentioning it within my hearing."

After a moment, she smiles. "If you even so much as thought for one second that I care if anyone knows who I'm seeing, you don't know me very well. But hopefully, you'll fix that." She meets his eyes from where she stands, the following words shifting on a gentler note: "If you want to be with me, then be with me, Alexander."

Alexander looks up at her, still laughing. The merriment transforms his entire face, from creepy and intense to boyish and soulful. "And they call me the lunatic," he accuses, in between gasps of air. "I think that was possibly the sexiest thing anyone has ever done regarding me, Miss Reede." As she goes on, the joy fades from his eyes, but it still leaves some of the amusement. He slowly levers himself to a standing position. "I do. Want to be with you, Isabella. You are a source of continuous discovery. Outrageous," a glance up towards where the announcement emerged, "but in the best of ways."

He laughs, again, and rubs the back of his neck. "I should ask you out on a date. Would you like to go on one? A date?" He gives her a hopeful look from under his bangs.

And they call me the lunatic.

"Yeah, well," Isabella says, flippantly and ever competitive. "I'll beat you there, too." She flashes him a winning smile, brows winging upwards. And as he stands, his shadow dwarfing her smaller, shorter form, she tilts her head back to meet his eyes, her own burning - all passionate heat and blatant challenge. "You may have been named after one of the greatest conquerors this world has ever seen, but I intend to turn the tables."

Outrageous, he names her, and she laughs. "Well, I'll take that as as a compliment. Everything in this world is finite, Mister Clayton. We ought to be spending the minutes we can doing the things we've never done before."

When he asks her out, there's a blink, and she grins - broad enough to make that dimple visible. "After everything we've been through together, I wonder if we even need to be so formal about it, especially since we've never really..." She pauses, watching his hopeful look, and she reaches out to gently cup the side of his face.

"I'd love to," she murmurs.

After a moment, she laughs again, winding her arms around him if he allows, her fingers slipping back into his hair. "Do we have to wait until the first date for other things?" she wonders out loud, in that innocent way she favors; the kind of tone that would get her imprisoned in the blink of an eye. "Because I think that earlier production deserves a kiss." Her lashes pull low. "And the way your shirt is clinging to you is driving me insane."

"You do know that there isn't actually a competition for who is the craziest person in Gray Harbor," Alexander says, mock chiding. "That's not a title anyone wants." A pause. "But if there was, I'd win it. I have years of practice on you." Oh, that's a challenge. A playful one, but one nonetheless.

He allows the winding, and winds his arms around her in turn. "I think we're adults. Which I think means we get decide how we want to do this, and I guess anyone who doesn't like it can, uh, kiss your size eight?" He grins. "But I think a date would be fun. So...thank you, Isabella Reede."

And then he bends down to kiss her. As a reward for being the most outrageous and insane. For now.

"You have the years, but I have the drive. So let's." Not that Isabella is being serious about it, but now that she's talking big game, it's impossible to back out now. But with his amusement causing those pools of living night to come alive and threaten to swallow her, she can't help but smile - there's an absent note to it, a dreamy quality as she willingly submerges herself in the throes of the moment. He told her once before that it's rare that he ever laughs, and she would have believed it in the night they met...

...but it's been two months since then, thrown in one another's orbit constantly. Things were bound to give. Things were bound to change.

"Mmhm," she says. "My size eight." She pauses. "It would have to be just that though, because I'm relatively certain my size four and my thirty-six C is spoken for." That velvet look returns, peering up at him from under her lashes. "But yes, I think it'd be fun, too." She pauses, and adds, somewhat haltingly. "I'll show you my world, if you'll show me yours."

Not that she would be able to say something else when his mouth finds hers. Fingers slip through his hair when she tightens her grasp on him, her lips parting under his onslaught, tasting coffee and the barest traces of rainwater and ozone. "Fill me?" she murmurs, body slowly listing to the couch, and by the tone and breathless pitch of it, she doesn't only mean physically.

"Play me again, Alexander."