2019-08-27 - Two Pieces of Work

When he manages to find Isabella Reede's familiar, cherry-red Jeep waiting for him in the Addington Memorial Hospital parking lot, one wouldn't think that the team she had been playing for just lost the charity paintball game.

Her slender form is leaning against the hood of her vehicle, emerald eyes veined with gold burning in the half-light of the sunset hour. Her dark hair has been drawn in a messy ponytail, sunkissed skin flushed and luminous with the dewy wake culled from her earlier physical exertions, clad in a tanktop, cargo pants that sling low on the flare of her hips and sneakers. The familiar, restless energy that he associates with her only seems to have intensified in the throes of heated competition, and the moment she sees him, she pushes away from it, trotting over in a quick clip; slow enough, still, to warn him in advance as to what's coming.

If he doesn't avoid it, or say anything along the lines of not wanting it, she throws her arms around him, slanting her mouth against his and kissing him in front of God, the universe, and whoever else might be gawking at them in front of the building. He could practically hear it, the frenetic beating of her heart, and sense how blood rushes like an uncontrollable cyclone within her veins. The thrill of the fight is a very real thing, liable to heighten her urges, douse the already volatile chemicals between them with gasoline, and set their bodies and the surrounding areas on fire; he is extremely fortunate that they are in public.

That was around twenty minutes ago.

Her fiery temperament seems to have cooled off some by the time they get to his residence at 13 Elm, the Jeep's long shadow encompassing the sidewalk in front of it, lengthened all the more by the onset of the early evening. As far as days and weather go, the hours couldn't be better for outdoor activity - the skies are cloudless, and especially for the Pacific Northwest, they are unusually clear, leaving in plain view the spray of thousands of stars across the horizon, twinkling from the encroaching black like shards of ice. Street lamps cast a faint haze along the road, but even this bit of ground-based light pollution isn't enough to blunt or hamper the spectacular view.

"I brought a six-pack," she tells him as they move for his door, wiggling the chilled bottles of beer clutched in her grip in emphasis, her other hand tucked into her pocket. "I figured you could use a little bit of a drink after today."

She seems hesitant in her brief pause, as always when it comes to emotions that occupy the softer aspects of the human spectrum. She has given condolences before, to friends and colleagues, but considering Alexander's relatively unique place in her life, it feels different somehow, unable to help but wonder whether her past experiences in that regard are in any way adequate. Stopping in front of his door, she finally looks up to meet his eyes, green-gold irises gleaming like a cat's in the shadows cast by his front porch. Her delicate features are soft and solemn.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs. "About Doctor Faust. I know she was your friend."

After another moment, even softer: "Is there anything I can do for you?"

Alexander's initial greeting upon seeing Isabella is a bit more subdued - an upward lift of lips but most of the smile is in his dark eyes that give her an amused and appreciative once over. "You look--" and then she's reaching him and although he braces himself for just a moment, he doesn't pull away. As her arms come around him, he returns the favor, and the kiss, with an uninhibited enthusiasm that no doubt shocks at least one person heading for a very solemn and sad visit with a dying relative. When they do break apart, for breath if nothing else, he murmurs, "If this is your reaction to paintball, then I might have to overcome my distaste for firearms and get one of those guns."

He doesn't try to distract her on the drive back to his place, and doesn't talk much, either, his thoughts easily drifting away to somewhere else. He does raise an eyebrow when she takes the six-pack inside, and murmurs, "I could have a beer. Thank you, Isabella. Or are you just trying to get me tipsy so that you can have your wicked way with me?"

The hint of playful flirtation dies as she continues. His head ducks, and he opens the door for them both, passing inside and flicking on the light, although the sunset provides enough to see by, still. Luigi in his cage lets out a low whistle of greeting, then moves to the cage door and rattles it to demand to be let out. The interior of the house is warm, a bit too warm for comfort - Alexander has no AC, and no one leaves windows open on Elm when they're not there. He goes about opening up a few now, though, to let what breeze there is start to move through the house. "She was. Records indicate it was complications of her injuries; sepsis. It happened fast." It's a toneless recital of facts. Rather than look at her, he crosses over to the bird's cage and unlocks it, letting the door swing open with Luigi attached. Luigi takes off, doing a couple of circuits of the living room, divebombing Isabella with a couple of indignant cries before settling back on the top of his cage.

Alexander smiles at him, before turning his attention back to Isabella. "Why not crack us both open a beer, and sit with me?" A nod to the couch. "It's not exactly fancy, but...I'm glad you're here. It helps."

There had been a brilliant smile laden with her usual brazen, decisive confidence when she told him, "You don't need them" regarding the firearms; words that implicate the idea that she is fully aware as to how dangerous he can truly be when unleashed. And were she asked, she would tell him directly that it was part of his appeal.

Isabella's stare, as usual, misses nothing - it would be understandable that he would be subdued in the manner that he was. He had always spoken of Penny with an easy, almost effortless affection that made it clear to anyone that he honestly valued her as a friend and comrade-at-arms in the face of Gray Harbor's strangeness. But his playful flirtation is answered with a laugh and a tilt of her head, to press her mouth against the curve of his shoulder while looking up at him with those cat's eyes. "Tempting," she tells him gamely, mischief present there and always. "You know I didn't even think about that when I bought them, and now I'm curious, so if I continually ply you with beer tonight, you'll only have yourself to blame." And then, that air of impossibly saccharine innocence - always with that inherent risk of somehow transporting her to prison, shackled with the maximum sentence: "So how many bottles does it take to get you to make out with someone on the couch like you're eighteen again? Two? Three? Not that I'm saying I'm interested but...you know. Asking for a friend."

Said in a tone that is very clear on the fact that she is most definitely not asking for a friend, punctuated by a waggle of her eyebrows.

The interior of the house is painfully humid, and it doesn't help her present state - she still looks like a frightful mess, as if she'd really come from a battlefield. But the effects of the afternoon's competition is still active in her, judging from the way her eyes look and how the flush of rigorous exercise clings to her cheeks and the hollow of her throat...the feminine valley hinted at by her tanktop's neckline. Unforgivably, unapologetically, tumultously alive, the storms within herself easily giving her the impression that whatever is inside her is too big for her body - too much for anyone to handle, including herself.

With Luigi unleashed, she stares at the bird unflinchingly as he divebombs at her, though she can't help but follow his flight path when he veers off into the living room. It gives her something else to focus on - Alexander's expressions and the tone of his voice makes his grief plain enough, and she is doing what she can not to seem like she's voyeuring on his suffering. But her playful facade does recede to the background when he tells her about cause of death - of course he would already know.

"Two beers, coming right up," she says, moving to set the six pack on the coffee table so she can twist off the tops, setting them on...are there coasters? She hunts for some in a cursory fashion, but if she can't find any within reach, she gives up and sets the bottles on the surface. "Do you mind if I...?" She gestured vaguely towards where she thinks the bathrooms are, her smile taking on a sheepish bent. She is fully aware that she isn't presentable, and considering her usual confidence and comfort within her own skin, she usually doesn't care, but the least she can do is wash her face and get rid of what remains of the speckles of paint on her cheek and the side of her throat.

"Depends on the someone," Alexander says, after thinking about it far too long. Then he relents with a sidelong smile. "With you, I don't think I'd require any alcohol at all, Isabella. The making out on the couch is its own reward." He waggles his eyebrows back at her, then flashes a brief grin.

There are no coasters. Nor even any suggestion that coasters and this house have ever thought of one another. The coffee table is a battered and scarred thing anyway; a few moisture rings won't do it any further harm. Likewise, the couch is worn and frayed - although not stained. The overall tidyiness of the house suggests that Alexander is a neat housekeeper, almost obsessively so, but nothing in the way of furniture shows that more than the minimum has been spent on it. Except the bird cage: that's large enough to dominate a corner of the living room, and is filled with different perches, toys, a fancy bath, feeders, and the like. Along with the bird itself, the whole arrangement is probably worth more than the rest of the furniture combined.

At her request, he smiles. "Not at all." He gestures for her to follow - the house isn't large, but he points out the door to the bathroom anyway. It's the opposite end from his bedroom (that door is open, and a tidy, shabby sort of bedroom can be seen), and there are two other doors on the hall. One open, leading to a home office, one closed and locked, with a knob that's notably newer than the rest of the doors. The frame around the lock shows signs of recent repair, as well. "I wasn't lying, before." He says, quietly, his eyes unwavering on her. "You look gorgeous like that. Vital." Then he leaves her to find her way to the bathroom, and goes to sit on the couch. While she's gone, Luigi flies down to his knee, and he spends some time playing with the bird and running him through a few tricks.

His fastidiousness regarding the care of his own home is a thing that Isabella has already noticed in a prior visit, though she hadn't been there to see him, but his roommate. It makes sense on multiple levels, considering the man seems perpetually determined to do something properly if he was going to do it at all, with his usual level of paranoia, it stands to reason that it would be easier to determine if anything had been shifted or moved if he knew where everything was in his house, exactly. There's no judgment there, though it does only highlight their differences, great and small - the archaeologist lives her life in a state of organized clutter, though given her dedication to her work, that aspect of her life is at the very least given the same care he does with everything else in his life.

She follows where he leads after making note of the pricier bird set-up; she had prevented herself from snooping around, as always hungry for even the smallest and most insignificant details of his life. The plants she already know exists are taken in when they pass his kitchen, and so are the doors leading into the other rooms of the house. The state of his bedroom draws her eye immediately, if not just because the memories of the one and only time they've actually been together still leaves her aching for more - always - whenever she thinks about it (and this occurs more often than she could admit to anyone), and the office is familiar, too, remembering glimpses of it in the one time she used a video app to talk to him. The locked door, the signs of its recent damage and the new knob gets a glance, arresting her attention immediately, not just because of the implied secrecy but the ridiculous parallels it makes in her family home, with the single, closed white door at the end of the second floor hallway.

The young woman doesn't ask about it. Not yet.

I wasn't lying, before.

Those striking irises lift to hold his own, these pools of living night that never fail to ensnare her when she is unaware. There is a pause, before her smile returns. "Your terrible biases are showing, Mister Clayton," she says, stepping inside the bathroom. "I'll be back in a moment."

She doesn't take long; water replaces the dew on her skin and just that much leaves her looking refreshed when she returns to him in the living room. She has also removed her sneakers, to place somewhere close to the door - a habit as much as anything, never one to subscribe to the American tendency to track leavings from the outside into a dwelling. Padding towards the couch in her socks, she's scrubbed her face and did what she can to remove the day's grime off her without actually taking a shower. She wiggles a finger at Luigi, though she doesn't impose her presence on the bird, either. The cushion next to him depresses under her more negligible weight, her body turned slightly so she could face him more directly, one leg tucked under her knee.

Isabella says nothing for a while when she gets there, but with a sigh, she finally reaches out, fingers curled, to sweep her first and second knuckles gently over his cheek. "Do you...want to talk about it?" she asks, quietly and hesitantly. "I know I'm not the most..." Forthcoming? Especially when it comes to her own feelings. Teeth depress faintly on the curve of her lower lip, blood rushing to the surface and flushing that with color, also. "...you know. But I'm here." Her humor flashes, a bolt of lightning in the growing and just as quick, albeit this is faded on the edges. "If anything, I came over so you could take advantage and not the other way around."

"I don't consider it a terrible bias," Alexander says, with a faint smile, before he lets her go. When she returns, Luigi eyes her with black suspicion, and takes off as soon as she sits down, flying to sit on top of the television so that he can stare at her from afar. Like pet, like owner in some regards, although in this case, Alexander doesn't seem to be inclined to keep his distance. Once she's settled into place, he puts a hand on her knee, stroking it gently, absently, as he leans into her touch.

"I don't know," he says, quite honestly. "It's...she was a good person, Isabella. She did what she could for people after they were dead, tried to put things right for them within the confines of her work. She was kind to me when she didn't have to be, and when it could have endangered her career to be so. I feel that I let her down. Not solving this before it could hurt her. Maybe even triggering this with looking into the damned Baxters in the first place." His gaze drops. "But none of that really matters. It won't resurrect her. It won't bring her brother back to life. It won't stop an ounce of pain or injustice." He sighs, long and low. "It's death. It happens. Far too often."

A crooked not-a-smile. "I forgot that having people I care about means that I also have people who I care when they are hurt, or lost, or killed. It hurts every day. This is just another type of hurt. I'll survive it." He turns his face just enough so that he can kiss her fingers. "But thank you. For being here. For caring. For, ah," he chuckles, "allowing me to take advantage. Especially when your own loss is still there." He leans forward - it's not to kiss her, or not mostly to kiss her, but just to gently rest his forehead against hers. "You are better at these 'feeling' things than you acknowledge, Isabella."

She listens, because she can't not and as always, the way she does this is hardly a passive or disinterested thing. Isabella's attention is generally unyielding, liable to give off the impression that the entire world doesn't exist, discarded on the wayside in favor of this one thing in which she has decided to invest herself wholly. Not just the words, but the tics and subtleties of his face, the honest and open way he introduces her to the state of his inner self and how he is processing the death of a friend who has stood by him in spite of the strangeness and danger of his work. The doubt, the blame, the guilt - none of it is unknown to her and judging by the way that expressive face twists faintly, he would know that she understands it on a level past what could be considered cursory.

"If she worked with you to help others deal with the way this city is, I'm sure she understood," she tells him quietly. "She didn't strike me as the sort to just sit on the sidelines while you were in the trenches, battling it out. You didn't underestimate her, what she was capable of, and I think she'd be more grateful for that than anything else. I know even if the worst ever happened, that's how I would feel." Her thumb traces an absent line over his cheek's hollow, savoring the scrape of stubble against tender skin. "She would want you to keep doing what you do, and in spite of..." all the shit in this town, illustrated with a gesture, never one to spit out invectives unless drawn out by her temper. "...the sadness and the losses, speaking as someone who has directly benefited from your determination and tenacity, who you are and what you do, the dedication you exhibit, all of that is important and such an inherent part of you that to stop now would render you unrecognizable to those who know you and like you for who you are - those of us who prefer you this way."

Her eyes lift to meet his, searching when he adopts a downcast look. "You saved my mind," she murmurs, stressing the words despite the pitch of her voice. "I'm nothing without it."

The kiss he presses into her fingers has her palm rotating slowly, to cup his cheek in full. The reminder of her own loss has her exhaling a breath - the better to smother everything else roiling inside her, still; the extent of her grief, the burden of her unspoken regrets and unbridled and unaddressed rage at having been denied the opportunity to address them on top of everything else. But she says nothing about it, eyes reduced to thin, glittering emerald-gold crescents when his face eclipses hers in its shadow, the weight of his forehead pressing against hers and his breath teasing the seam of her mouth.

"It's easier if someone else is doing the feeling," she tells him quietly. "I know how to listen, and I know how to give an opinion." And how. "But confessing my own is never something I was ever accustomed and..." Her tongue slips from between her lips, as if in a conscious attempt to lubricate the passage of the words that follow: "...I've never...this is new to me, being...involved. I'm fumbling my way through, same as you, I think."

After a moment, she closes the distance, her mouth on his, her other hand coming up to cup both sides of his face with the softer warmth of her two palms, before they slide into his hair and the half-curls waiting for her. "If I could take it all away, I would," she whispers against him, lashes drifting shut. "In a heartbeat, no matter what it would mean for me. The pain, your jagged edges, all of it. I'm not a particularly good confessor, but I think I'll do just fine being a sin-eater."

"People are going to think I've brainwashed you, if you keep saying such nice things about me," Alexander jokes, quietly. It's not that he hasn't listened to her, or appreciated what she had to say; but his discomfort with any sort of compliment flares up as she goes on, and he can't help but shake his head. "Not me. Not alone, certainly. I just kept you from doing something you'd regret later until things could resolve themselves."

He doesn't have to be an empath, or trespass on her mind, to pick up those subtle signs of grief. He doesn't press her on them, but his hand tightens on her thigh, a comforting squeeze, and he offers her a faint smile. "Fumbling. You fumble exceptionally well, Miss Reede."

And then there's that kiss, and for a moment he thinks of nothing else. He presses close, a slow hunger awakening in the contact of their lips. He indulges it without hesitation, focusing on nothing else but her and the way she feels against him. When the kiss is broken, he sighs, gently. "I wouldn't," he murmurs, so low that if they weren't where they were, she wouldn't hear him at all. "I wouldn't take away any of it. I don't think. I don't know who that person would be, without the pain and the edges. I don't know who you would be, if I could wipe those things away from you." A crooked smile. "I'm a selfish man. I like you as you are, and...while I don't like me, I at least know me. And I wouldn't know that other Alexander."

"Yes, you." She's firm on that, but she mollifies the decisive way she speaks the words with a small smile. "But yeah, not alone."

She can understand that, and not, and as he murmurs these quiet, private confessions, these glimpses of his inner self that she is constantly starved for, Isabella falls quiet for several long heartbeats. She doesn't see him, can't, not this close, when her eyes are barely open - but she feels him plenty when his welcome weight is so close to her, radiating life, the sigh that whispers across her mouth and warms her cheeks. But she can't help but be skeptical - certainly there'd be some things he would want to change, that there would be regrets that things hadn't gone differently. "There has to be some," she says; she might not be great with feelings, but she knows people. Not in the way Vivian Glass does, but rather out of perception and experience. She had spent over ten years out in the world, and seeing as much of it as she could...talking to others, overcoming language and cultural barriers. She is as certain of this as she is of her own breath.

But when he confesses that he likes her as she is, she can't help but fall silent - a weighted thing, a heavy thing, but not borne out of skepticism. Not really - she knows he is speaking truthfully, but at the same time, he doesn't have all the information. Not enough data, as he would put it.

He may not like himself, but... "I like you," Isabella tells him, softly. Simple words that are, ultimately, paltry substitutes for the things she is incapable of saying at the moment. Lips quirk faintly upwards. "I guess I'll just have to for the both of us."

Another long moment of silence, before her body moves, a long leg and its socked feet shifting to tilt them both on the couch, to frame his hips with her knees, so she could look down directly at his face and the eyes that never fail to threaten her submergence within them - to sink so deep, she may never be found again. Fingers splay loosely on his cheeks, pinkies and ring fingers teasing the mass of half-curls in his temples, thumbs tracing the hollow of his cheeks, the shape of his lower lip. She does nothing but this, for a time that simultaneously feels like an eternity and yet not long enough, committing these pieces and shapes of him to memory, because as with all things, this, too, is finite.

He could be gone tomorrow, lost forever in the places that never seem to get enough of his suffering, carrying what remains of her already broken heart with him. In retrospect, she could have spared herself the pain, but that, at least, she has never feared, when she knows that there are infinitely worse alternatives.

Her expression is indescribable, running the gauntlet of heightened emotion that she could never express in any articulate way. "Is it alright if I hang onto that?" she asks, finally, her words barely audible, and would not be if she hadn't situated herself this way, when her face hovers so close, lashes pulled so low that it is impossible to divine what's underneath them. "As I am?"

Alexander actually considers the question. Or, rather, the assertion. While he considers, he kisses the corners of her mouth, briefly, gently. Then her chin. Her cheeks. Finally he says, "There are things I wish I'd never done. Things I wish never had happened. Things I'd pray to forget, if I prayed any more." A slow breath. "But the thought of not knowing who I'd be if those things were wiped away? It's terrifying. I want to be me. Not anyone else. And I am...I'm the sum of my parts, my experiences, my mistakes, and all the broken pieces of me. An Alexander Clayton without those things would probably be a better person, more worthy of good things in the world. But that person wouldn't be me, and I would bash his fucking head in rather than let him replace me." He gives the coffee table a sidelong look. "Have, actually. Although that one was also a serial killer, so maybe not an entire upgrade."

And then he kisses her again, slow and sweet. "It's fine to hang onto what you value, Isabella. As you are." He pulls back from their close connection, but not to withdraw from her. Instead, he shifts, and if she allows pulls her closer against his chest, where he can lean back and cuddle her at the same time. Because he's selfish and it's comfy. His fingers drift to her necklace, play lightly with the chain. "You never told me how you got this," he says, but carefully leaving the door open for her to shut it down, if she wishes.

There really are times when she has to wonder how they managed to get here, when their first days of their acquaintance has him unwilling to touch even the most indirect parts of her. These days, Alexander freely indulges in his affection, and her own, the silent permission and allowance that she has given him to touch and taste her whenever and however he wanted. Since the first time he worked up the gumption to try, she has effectively lost count as to how many times he's kissed her.

Her eyes drift shut again, mired in the quiet space constructed by his willingness to help himself to the parts of her he can reach, lips roving over her face, mapping his own course through the plains and rivers of her. But for however Isabella is so willing to lose herself in his touch, she is still attentive, unable to turn it off, really. "You used to?" she murmurs. "Pray?" Though the more he talks about it, the more she gets a sense that isn't just allegory, and her evergreen gaze finds him again, perplexed. She can appreciate the soliloquy - anything, really, that tells her more about how he views the world, but the vehemence and the expletive has her pausing thoughtfully: "...alright..." She glances at the coffee table, somewhat warily now. "Explain."

Delayed, for the moment, by his mouth capturing hers - it distracts her temporarily from prying, as always a tactile creature and a perpetual slave to her senses, so attuned to the physical world and its various spaces in the way he is so attached to its more intangible layers. Slow, yes, but no less passionate for it, and flavored with the bittersweet ache that bands around her chest and constricts tightly when he's being so careful, and gentle, and engrossed with what she offers, fixated on how she feels against him and the method in which she returns his sweet explorations. She isn't conscious of the world taking on a slant at his lean, until she's half draped on him on the couch, cradled partially on his chest and his side and that long leg thrown over him.

The weather takes a turn outside - darkness has fallen, a sudden flash of lightning washing out the stars and the pitter-patter of rain slipping down the roof, and tapping against glass and the open window panes. The white gold chain through which he threads his fingers hasn't lost its ice-cold bite, digging into his skin as if in warning that he has traversed through boundaries that he wasn't meant to cross, with the young, fiery creature in his arms. Eyes half-lid, they stare at the far wall, her cheek pressed against his chest and savoring the steady beats of his heart - calmer, maybe, compared to her own, when it races just by being so close to him.

"....it was a gift," she finally says. "Sid was late giving it to me, but he needed the time to save up for it. He managed to finally buy it for me before prom night, the year we turned sixteen. It's been with me ever since."

Alexander hisses as the weather turns, as lightning gathers for the strike. He chuckles against her hair. "I was in three cults, Isabella. Yes, I used to pray. Quite fervently, at times." Although that's laced with a dark bitterness that he can't easily hide. But he tries to soften it with a kiss on the top of her head. "As to my ill-fated doppleganger...it was just a Dream, Isabella. It wanted my life, and I objected. We fought. I won." The way his arms tighten on her suggests it might have been more than that, either more difficult or more disturbing, but he doesn't go into details.

His finger continues to stroke along the cold chain and her warm skin, straying from one to the other, as if enjoying the contrast. Or investigating it, and the strange, ever-present chill to the necklace. "That was right before your brother disappeared," he murmurs, almost more to himself than to her. Proving that, whether he's brought it up or not, he's more than aware of another of Gray Harbor's mysterious disappearances. His gaze strays to the window and the flickering light outside. "That's when I knew you were truly in trouble, you know. When I went looking for you. You'd left this behind. Before, I thought - maybe you'd just gotten distracted. If I hadn't found it, I probably would have assumed you were just standing me up - not that I would have blamed you - and returned home." His finger flicks down to slide over the stone. "But even knowing so little about you, I felt that you wouldn't have left this if you had a choice."

She doesn't pry, but by the way the silence hangs so heavily around her, he would know even without looking at her that Isabella senses that there is more to it. She doesn't tilt her head up to meet his eyes, but rather she tastes it in the air, how he buries his face against her hair and how his arms tighten around her. Her hand slips up, a gentle pass over his sternum through his clothing, to rest gently over where the beleaguered engine of him beats, pounding his unique staccato against his ribs. She leaves her fingers there, splayed gently in those long, delicate star-points. "I thought there was just the one with the origies," she observes, but there's a sense of admiration and envy there that follows his words about fighting his doppleganger, and winning against it.

She is suddenly thankful for their placement, and how he's unable to view her faintly agonized mien.

"But you did," she murmurs, turning her face further into his chest and breathing in the salt from his skin, the lingering humidity and the touch of lightning she tastes from his aura. "Which is very fortunate for the both of us because I don't think I'd be content with a mere imitation." He'd feel her smile against his shirt. "I have standards." After a moment: "It sounds harrowing, though. Being forced to kill yourself." Her voice level, but there is something there, twisting from the carefully masked undertones of her remark. "Does your doppleganger...is it recurring? The copy that wants your life."

He pinpoints the chronology and she can't help but wonder what he does know about her brother's disappearance, but she is unable to ask, feeling it stick to the back of her craw. She swallows around it, falling silent as Alexander revisits the day everything irrevocably changed for the both of them. That's when she finally turns her face, to nuzzle gently against the hinge where the hard line of his jaw meets his throat, the faintest brush of her teeth against his pulse. It keeps her occupied, nevermind the yawning desire to once again sink into herself and reach out with her arms - to dip herself into the room she and her twin used to occupy, where he was her, and she was him, only to be disappointed yet again at how empty it is, and the pain that never fails to follow. It does allow her to speak, at least. "I could never leave it behind," she affirms softly. "It's..."

She pauses. "...it's the only piece of him I have left, that was meant solely for me."

His fingers close easily over the gem, and it carries that same ever present chill. Against his rough fingers, it looks ordinary in the half-light of the living room, a pale white, translucent stone that comes alive every time lightning flashes outside, collecting its radiance and passing it through its natural crystalline qualities, leaving it with the faint glow of its superior adularescence. Flaring, then fading, again and again. Within a storm as active as this, it pulses like a heart wrought from stone.

Alexander's skin, as she knows, is marked with scars even to the touch. Not the large, coherent scars of a major accident, but just several dozen small souvenirs from a lifetime of encounters. His chest is particularly marked, with a newer shiny burn mark forming a notably different texture to the rest of him, of even of the long but very old scar vertically down his belly. Underneath his skin, his heart beats steady and strong, though it speeds up briefly with each boom of thunder. Anxiety and loud, difficult to predict noises don't always mix. "No, there were three," he says, caressing her arm with his fingertips. "It's just that the one with the orgies was the most fun."

He makes a pleased sound as she turns into his chest, his heart speeding up just a little. His voice remains steady. "No, not reoccurring. Not that one. There was the worm-doppleganger, but that one tried to eat me, and I don't think it was aimed at me. There were more of us there. It is rather unsettling to have to try and kill yourself twice in one week, though," he mutters, not quite under his breath.

He lets his thumb rest briefly on the cold stone, drinking in its chill, before he settles it back into the hollow of her throat, and lets his hand wander to warmer, more welcoming parts of her. "I'm glad you have something of him, at least," he says, quietly. "I know it's inadequate, but if it brings you comfort, Isabella, I'm glad you have at least that."

She knows; the heat of that first moment had been more about discovery and less about the burning questions, appreciating the effect that the scars have had on his skin and imprinting the stories of his life through a sensory medium. They have done nothing but to intensify her interest and heighten his appeal to her, feeling all the more fortunate that these are secrets that he has deigned to share with no one but herself for how many years. Even now, Isabella remembers where they are, and he would know it, how those light fingertips walk over the fabric of his clothing to touch the burn on his right pectoral and the line of that vertical scar down the defined ridges of his abdomen, chiseled there not by extraneous and self-inflicted punishments in the gym or any sort of physical training, but actual dangerous scenarios in where he has had to fight for his life. She loves them all and can't get enough of them in the end - but the inquiries are bound to follow.

"Three?" the archaeologist repeats, tilting her head a little bit away from him so she could look up his profile. "What were the other two?" A reasonable question to ask, though chances are there were more; which denominations, where, how old was he, and most importantly, why? But she doesn't plunge into those waters just yet, merely following the flow of conversation like how one does a river when sailing over it.

The ache returns when she hears his heart speed up a little, fingers moving in an attempt to hunt for more of him - skin, hair, anything she could reach, blindly following the shapes of him hinted at by his shirt and traipsing over a body hammered and rendered hardy and unyielding upon the anvil of constant adversity. It is casually sensual, but not and never just that - there is awe in her touch, faint traces of her disbelief and admiration present in each pass of her fingers....envy, also, at how well-equipped he really is to survive Gray Harbor and cities like it.

Should he look down at her, he'd find her eyes and the bonebreaking filaments of emotion within the golden shards of them; nostalgia, sorrow, longing, the elements that he could never parse or identify without using his gifts, at this self-aware observation as to how he knows such sentiments are inadequate. And they are. But she can't expect anyone else to understand what she lost, can she?

"You're very kind," she murmurs at last, with a self-deprecating sort of smile. "To say that and mean it, without disparaging the loss. It's been over a decade since, and I wonder what professionals would say if I ever took up their couches and let them pry me apart on the matter. How long it would take for them to lose patience at the idea as to how it feels like yesterday, no matter how much time has passed." She falls quiet, and with lower, softer words: "But it does. Feel like just yesterday. It feels like that every day, for the last eleven years."

There's a low, pleased rumble from Alexander as Isabella's hand explores his chest, and the scars there. This close, with her hand on his skin and their bodies curled around each other, it's impossible to miss the way he goes rigid under the follow-up question, even though it had to be one that he had to expect would come up. There's a muscle that jumps in his jaw when she looks up to study his profile, although he deliberately forces those muscles to relax, so that he can bend his head and kiss the tip of her nose. "I'd rather not discuss it. Right now," he says, and while he keeps his tone gentle, there's steel behind it. And maybe a thread of panic, too, if the sudden hammering of his heart is anything to go on.

Instead, he nuzzles her, scraping stubble lightly across the much softer skin of her cheek and jaw. A distraction, perhaps, as much as affection. "I don't know if that's a wrong thing. It's a painful thing, but...maybe it's a thing that you need. Right now. And if one day you don't need it, maybe it'll turn into something else. Something kinder to you, I hope."

The denial that follows is somewhat surprising - both in the fact that it exists and how gently he does it. There had been a time when he was blunt when it came to his boundaries, uncaring as to how hostile the tone. But there's a curious look in Isabella's eyes as she watches him, and the nervous jump of his heartbeat, elevated to prominence at the hollow of his throat. Ever perceptive, while she doesn't know the definition and shape of it, she recognizes fear when she sees it in front of her - she's intimate enough with the emotion to know how it looks on another person.

"Alright," is her single-word acquiescence, and in response to how gently he poses his rejection, she turns her face to press her mouth against where his pulse is so visible against the side of his throat. "Shh. It's fine, honest," she murmurs against his skin. Her palm flattens over his rapidly beating heart, as if she could reach within and soothe it. "As interesting as you are, I'm actually not in a hurry to learn everything there is to know about you. Especially if it hurts." She pauses, and looks up to meet his eyes again. "As contrary as that is to my usual impatience." A smile plays up the corners of her mouth there.

Tiny aftershocks of sensation tickle the underside of her jaw at his nuzzle, webbing across her more dormant senses and he'd feel the flat of her hand sliding up underneath his shirt, to encircle his waist and rest somewhere against his back. Her head tilts sideways to make room for him, softer skin yielding against his coarser own, fingernails biting gently against his side. "I..." Lashes lower to kiss her cheeks, the words rolling low from the back of her throat, and felt against his mouth, thrumming with the quickened beats of her heart.

A long, drawn out silence, before: "...I don't want it to be kind," she whispers, her arm tightening around him reflexively, the words once again taking on that drifting, far away lilt.

"Impatience is fine," Alexander says, in return, his mouth managing to turn upwards even as he fights back the panic that still threatens. Her acceptance of it helps, and his chest rises and falls with some deep, slow breaths until his heart slows, bit by bit. "Although I can understand wanting to leave some mysteries for later. Savor it," he adds, and even manages to waggle his eyebrows playfully. A groan escapes him, panic transmuting into something warmer as she caresses his body. He shifts to allow her hand better access, and studies her. His near-black eyes are alight with desire, but also curiosity and a strange sympathy. And he's unable to resist asking, "Why, Isabella? You can't blame yourself for your brother's disappearance, surely?"

The drag of her hand is deliberate, slow and exploratory, nails biting in with such delicacy, it's as if she thinks he's fragile. In many ways, he is - could be, no matter how he gives the air of a staunch survivor. Fingers and the curved edges of her manicure climb up the shallow dip of his spine, absent patterns traced over a complexion shaded with a deeper tan than hers. The shift of his broader body has her following his tilt and her hand continues that deliberate, careful, painstaking climb upwards, hunting for the scars that are on his back and admiring them blindly, sightlessly. It gives her something to do as their conversation starts wading into murkier waters, but his warmth and the quiet sound he makes against her jaw do enough to anchor her to the present. Her hold on him tightens further, as if to prevent herself from drifting away.

Green-gold eyes find his own, dark but alive, akin to hot coals left smoldering, reminiscent of campfire evenings. His waggling eyebrows earn him a quick grin, but one that fades at the throes of mirrored want, because she never doesn't - she had told him before, hadn't she? She is the kind of woman who almost always knows what she wants. "Oh, good. Because I'm relatively certain there are parts on me that you've not even begun deciphering."

The question spears through her, a javelin through the heart and for a moment, he'd find the fissures and seams caused by that question crawling over her sunkissed features, threatening to expose the additional layers underneath. That is expected too, isn't it?

What she does instead is kiss him, with his face hovering so close. Her mouth finds his, hot, restless and suddenly urgent - not simply a response to the desire she finds in his eyes, but her own perennial need to keep him from discovering whatever other sins she may have committed. Against him, she hunts for a place to bury the things she is too terrified to relive.

"I'm not ready," she breathes against their kiss. "I know I promised, but..."

There are certainly scars to find back there. A laddering of small marks along one shoulder blade, almost like he was dragged over something, a group of dimpled marks low by his spine that feel unsettlingly like bite marks, something that might be a bullet wound and might be as if he was pierced with a spear high on his left side. Alexander's body would never be used as an example of unblemished beauty, to be certain. And he enjoys the caresses, without hesitation or reservation, and pays them back in kind, although his hands stay (mostly) over her clothing. His eyes meet hers with amusement. "Oh? That sounds like a challenge, Miss Reede." It's practically a purr, teasing and serious all at once.

But her reaction to his question dampens the amusement for just a moment. He meets her kiss with everything he has, urgency rising to meet hers. His arms tighten, pull her closer. And when she breaks it, he laughs, soft and low. "We're two pieces of work, you and I," he murmurs, and it's as fond as it is self-mocking. He moves to nibble at her ear, then whisper into it. "I should show you my bedroom. The bed is small, but it might fit two. If they're friendly. Are we friendly, do you think?"

''Sounds like?" Isabella repeats with a low laugh, unable to help herself, often lightning quick in seizing humor and donning it as armor. Her head tilts back to look at him, eyes alight with her mirth - and some manner of gratitude that he isn't trying to force her. And she knows it must be grating, irritating. He was an investigator - personal histories are his bread and butter. Some part of her anticipates how galling it really is to be subjected to these half measures.

"And here I thought you were getting to know me so well." And just like her, she throws down the gauntlet with another, clattering to his feet, always ready to salute him with her own foil.

Pulled further against his chest, close enough for the boundaries between their bodies to blur, she's left breathless when every ounce of his willingness to have her passes from his mouth to hers and once he's able to look at her again, he'd find the crystalline character of those eyes darkened and softened, peering at him from underneath heavy lids - his own desirous expression reflected back at him.

She releases a breath, one that stirs his hair, before dropping her mouth against his shoulder, climbing up slowly along his collar, and her head falling back when his teeth find her ear. "Mmm...it's difficult to tell," she murmurs, her climbing hand finally lowering to roam over the small of his back and urge him to press closer to her. "You got up so many times the first time we spent the night together that I'm not sure whether we're friendly. I mean, I don't even know if you're a spooner. Are you a spooner?" The devil's mischief is back, and she fights to suppress a grin. "Do you like being the big spoon or the little spoon?"

That fades too, before her mouth hunts for his again. "Take me there?" she wonders - a suggestion that isn't a suggestion. "Extra points if you can do it while making out with me on the way."

"Mm. I'm not a competitive person, in general. But I do like a good challenge, on occasion." Alexander's grin has a quality it rarely shows outside of moments like this - something lazy, confident, and masculine that hides any frustration he might be feeling because of her decision, in favor of just enjoying this moment with her. At her not-a-suggestion, his eyes widen. "Points? Wait, I'm collecting points here?" A mock worried look. "How many do I have already? How many should I have? I feel like I should have gotten a goddamned rubric at some point."

But honestly, all of the rapid chatter is just a distraction, to keep her from thinking about the hands skimming down her sides or the way his body shifts beneath her. All the better to maybe surprise her when his hands slide under her rear and lift her up, and he rises at the same time, keeping their bodies pressed close together, face to face. It takes effort; his arms and chest go taut, and there's an audible grunt of effort. But then he's doing his best to prove that he absolutely can make out with her on the way to the bedroom. Even if they bounce off a wall once on the way there.