2020-04-05 - Photographs and Memories

In order to prevent another jailbreak, Alexander has done his best to ensure that Isabella is released from the hospital before she can get too bored, and to entertain her while she was there. Jeapordy marathons might have been involved. But now they're home, and Alexander has retreated to his...er, his research room, where he is staring grumpily at a section of wall. It has pictures of Alice and Violet Whitehouse. Or maybe two pictures of Violet. Or Alice. It's hard to tell, really. Either way, it's taking up a lot of his time, and he's pacing back and forth before it.

At the very least she is no longer in pain.

Steam escapes the bathroom when she steps out of it, busily pulling her hair into a wet twist behind her head and moving towards the murder room where she could hear the unmistakable sounds of Alexander pacing. She's dressed in a hoodie, tank top and shorts, with her thigh-high socks that have pieces of Blue Bell's fur clinging to them...the perils of having a cat in the house. Drops of water cling to her skin, cheeks flushed by the heat, but at least she looks well on the mend from the grievous injuries she had suffered in the hands of the (hopefully) now-deceased Vivisectionist.

She has her phone in her hand, firing a text before a small laugh escapes her. "So Easton just asked me whether shenanigans were involved in getting me out of the hospital. I had to tell him that, regrettably, you preempted any mischief by knowing me so well." She leans a slender hip against the doorframe, smiling faintly. "Hard at work?"

"Next time. Tell him that next time, there can be shenanigans, and he can help provided it doesn't involve guns," Alexander says with a smile, although his attention remains on the wall for a beat longer. Then he turns, and gives her an appreciative up and down look, hoodie and all. "You're beautiful," he says, softly.

"And no, not work. Not exactly. Trying to figure Alice out. I think she's blaming Violet for what got her put away at the Asylum. Rewriting people's memories," Alexander murmurs. "But did she do it once she got back...or has she been doing it all along?"

His compliment has her smiling at him faintly. "You're terribly biased," she tells him, taking a few steps forward, her hands sliding in the pockets of her Oxford hoodie. "Is this because you're glad I'm out of the hospital?" Isabella leans in, pressing a brief kiss on his cheek before examining the wall in front of him, a thoughtful cast on those green-and-gold eyes. He'd be able to see it, how she visually follows his thoughts while they're splashed over the plaster this way.

"What brought this on?" she wonders. "What makes you think she blames her own sister, or that she's been rewriting memories? Did this all come about because of the incident with the boy you were looking into? The demon summoning gone wrong?" There's a hint of a skepticism on her features, visions of candles and pentagrams dancing past her gaze, but it fades before long. After everything else she's seen, she can't exactly discount the possibility.

A hand leaves her pocket eventually to toy with the moonstone pendant around her neck, the bracelet he had given her glinting under the light. She's had to do without during her stay in the hospital; now that she can wear them again, she looks more than just a little bit relieved.

"I don't think I'm biased at all, actually. I like to think I'm clear-eyed, easily able to see what exists." Alexander grins, and returns the kiss with a small one of his own. "It's because of what their father said. So I looked into Matthew Watkins." The smile falls away from his face. "It wasn't a demon summoning, but it did scar the young man for life. Possibly ruined him." His eyes turn back to the wall. "But I don't think it was their fault. They manifested, I think. Both at the same time, while he was there - maybe pulled everyone into a Dream. I think it was an accident." But there's a lilt in his voice, like maybe he WANTS to think it was an accident."

"Alice and Watkins were dating. And afterwards, sometime, Alice was committed. Not long afterwards, I think. A year or so? But here's the thing - everyone blames Violet for what happened. In lock step. Even though no one was there." He frowns. "It doesn't make a lot of sense."

"Well, if you put it that way," Isabella tells him, waggling her eyebrows playfully. Another glance at the wall, before she slowly gets in the middle of the murder room; there is no furniture to lean against, so she instead sits on the carpet in the room, long legs folding over and staring up at his notes. Brows furrow faintly as she follows his line of thought - or at least attempts to. But with more details regarding the Watkins boy revealed, it doesn't erase the traces of befuddlement on her features.

"Is he still around?" she wonders. "Watkins, I mean. You said that whatever happened to him may have ruined him for life, would it be possible to ask him?" Her thumb rolls over the iridescent surface of her moonstone. "And you're right, it doesn't make a lot of sense. If Violet was the one who was blamed by the entire town, why was Alice the one who was committed?" She chews on her bottom lip. "Did Alice take her place? Or did Violet compel her to? But you mentioned that they were trying to help each other in the visions you saw in the recovered books - if there was blame or any degree of enmity involved, wouldn't there be a more...visible friction between the sisters?"

Alexander moves to sit beside her, with a sigh. He reaches out to lightly stroke her back. "He's not in town anymore. He doesn't remember anything about Gray Harbor, and he went on to live a remarkably dull, uninteresting life. I haven't disturbed him. Not for this." He shakes his head, and snaps, "Violet never hurt anyone, Isabella. Never. I don't think she even had it in her." Then he bites it back, takes a deep breath. "Besides. I don't think she was strong enough to alter people's memories. I think Alice put it in people's heads. But I don't know...when she did it. Was she bad before she went away, or did that place break her, and now she's trying to establish herself the only way she knows?" He frowns. "And I don't know. I have to imagine there was SOME resentment from Alice. She was locked up. Violet was free. She stopped talking to Violet when she fell in love with her doctor."

As he reaches for her, Isabella shifts on the floor to get closer to him, until he can easily draw his arm around her back. Her temple finds the hard curve of his shoulder, green-and-gold eyes turned up to his notes and thinking about the rest in silence. There's a hint of pride on her features, however, as well as a distinct lack of surprise - of course Alexander would have looked into the Watkins boy already, tracked the trail of his life until he could no longer follow it. Her warm mouth gently finds the line of his jaw, absently nuzzling there while he rubs her back.

"I think if you want to know the answer to that question, you would have to ask her, knowing full well that you might not be able to trust what she replies," she tells him quietly, tilting her face back to meet his midnight stare. "Still, the incident itself sounds very confusing. Then again, twins do manage to complicate things by simply existing - especially bonded ones prone to mischief." She releases a breath, before reaching out to gently adjust the neckline of his shirt. "So what next, now that you know that?"

Alexander leans a little into her, and raises an eyebrow. "If I could FIND her, then I'd have a lot of questions of many different sorts," he says, a bit dryly. "And no, I don't trust her at all. But I still want to help her. I just need to figure out what is the help she needs as opposed to the help she might want." He makes a pleased noise as she nuzzles, and his arm tightens gently around her. "And...I don't know. I still don't have any leads on where she might be. Her father's stopped showing up for his usual drinking binges at the Pourhouse, so I suppose my next step is to approach the house. See if he's ill, or missing, or what." It's not that he sounds sad that the man might be either - but it clearly gnaws at him that he doesn't know which one it is.

"I would think so," Isabella remarks, attempting to imagine all the questions Alexander intends to ask Alice, though she anticipates that not many of those answers would be reliable. The acerbic expression fades - inspired by the way the woman accosted her lover while he was recovering, and perhaps having even caused the trouble that put him there - at the pleased noises he makes, her own arm sliding underneath his to run her fingers lightly up his spine, finding knots of tension that she attempts to work out with the pressure of a gentle thumb.

"Do you want the company?" she wonders. "Poking at Walter Whitehouse's domain?" Her head drops to press a kiss on the hollow of his shoulder, and remaining there for a moment, her lashes kissing his skin and drifting partially shut over her eyes as her gaze wanders over to the Baxter board. They linger in that direction, finding familiar names on that particularly gruesome display. "It might not be a bad idea to have back-up if you're going to keep chasing Asylum-related leads, especially now that we know the Doctor might be dangerous."

The Baxter board has new additions as well - namely phrases, though: Human sacrifice, 'they take the light with them when they go', 'shattered souls', and 'snuff out all the lights and no one has to die again'. Cheerful as always, Alexander's research project. He pauses at the offer, his back tensing rather than relaxing under her gentle pressure. "I worry about exposing you to Alice," he confesses. "She's not stable, and I don't yet know what she wants from me. Not what she really wants. I worry about involving you in her delusion. Or if she feels you might be an obstacle to her plans, whatever those are." He grimaces. "But, at the same time, I don't really want to do this alone, either. I am not the most stable of individuals, and I worry that...well."

He sighs. "Everyone says I belong in an asylum. In THE asylum. I'm worried that might happen, one of these days, if things go off the rails here. I don't have any particularly strong feelings about the Asylum itself, not if it costs ourselves to explore that place. I just want...Violet would want her sister to be safe and happy. If that's possible, I want to see that it does happen."

All information that she already knows - Alexander had imparted as much to her. "I'll have to add onto your board," Isabella tells him softly, nodding towards the paper mausoleum he has fashioned for their family, hanging up on the wall. It is, perhaps, the only gravesite the Baxters will ever find anywhere in Gray Harbor. His tension registering against her gentle fingers, smoothing her palm down his spine; lips quirk faintly. "I'm not about to let you handle all of that by yourself, so you might as well accept what I offering," she tells him simply. "And I'm not without my defenses. I'll be alright, Alexander, if that's your concern."

Dark brows furrow, but her attention holds steady on his sleepless, but comely profile. "Not everyone," she corrects gently, and this time, it's her turn to demonstrate tension as it winds over the line of her more slender shoulders, and cascades down the ridges of her backbone. "And you're not going to be committed there, or anywhere, if I have anything to say about it. Not there, especially. Violet Whitehouse died while she was in there, and Alice isn't particularly stable - we don't know what happened to the two of them in there, just that it was dangerous and people died." Her eyes drop down to her lap. "There's too much about the place that we don't know....and don't remember."

"Whether you are all right, Isabella, is always one of my higher concerns," Alexander says, softly, and gives her a sidelong, sad little smile. A she stiffens, he runs his fingers lightly down that tense spine. "And I know that you would never countenance such a fate for me. Nor would I go quietly to it, if it came to it. I'm just...wary." He sounds like he almost said 'weary', and corrected himself at the last moment. Nonetheless, when she says her help is inevitable, his smile is warm, touched with relief. "Good, though. I would appreciate your help. Just...go gently with Alice, even if she seems," a long pause, "dangerous. I don't want her to feel threatened. I think she's as likely to fight as flee, if she feels cornered."

Another sigh. "Yeah. And I don't know that we'll ever be permitted to find the answers - assuming they're stuck in our brains already, or not. So I'm trying not to think about it. And just concentrate on what I can do on this side." He shakes his head. "I'm not going to refuse to go over there, but trips to the Veil aren't my first preference. It's deadly and dangerous and treacherous there."

"And you are mine," Isabella concurs, pressing her lips gently on the corner of his mouth. "I'm just trying to assuage your worries slightly. I know you well enough that I know you'll never really stop worrying, no matter what I say and how many Veil monsters I actually stomp on." She winks at him sidelong there, though that moment of levity fades when their conversation falls back into the Asylum, and his possible confinement in it. "And...I know. Hear it often enough and sometimes, you think it might be easier to believe it. But don't - I hope you don't." Her hand lifts, gently taking ahold of his chin if he allows to tilt his head to meet her eyes.

His relief, and his acquiescence, if not acceptance, does earn him a glimpse of that fiery, undaunted smile. "I'll do my best not to raise her hackles," she replies. "Besides, outnumbering an opponent from the start tends to neutralize the need for a fight - at least on out side, anyway. Like I told you before, I'll follow your lead on this one. This was your promise to Violet, after all."

She nods. "I'd like to say that things on this side are safer, but I have my doubts, these days." She falls silent for a few moments, before she reaches to find her smartphone, swiping through her camera roll and showing him a picture of a map. It looks like a child had drawn it. "Not that it's daunted some - I don't know how old Margaret was when she drew this, but I think this cements the idea that trips over there are going to be necessary, to obtain the full picture regarding the Baxters and Addingtons. Hyacinth had me help her sort through Thomas' belongings. Most of them were wiped clean, but there were a few stored memories. I found this in one of Thomas' yearbooks."

Alexander never resists Isabella's touch - or hardly ever, anyway - and a soft smile comes to him as she tilts his face to better meet his eyes with her own. "Things are dangerous everywhere. But over there? Particularly so, and it is not our place. We are very small and very vulnerable there. I don't like to be either of those things. Plus," he admits, with an uncomfortable shrug, "If I go over there with you, or anyone, and we're separated? Or something happens to put my ride out of the fight? I have no way to get back home. No way to ensure whoever's with me gets back home. It's...not a good feeling."

When she pulls out the phone and shows him the map, he stares at it for a long moment. "...I guess even the Old Lady was an adorable child, once. This is terribly cute." A sneaky sort of grin. "But I can't make much sense of it, I admit. It would require exploration. I'm...surprised that the Hall seems so close to the sawmill. Interesting. What do you think?"

That soft smile has her returning it faintly, Isabella's eyes lingering on his features and holding there for just a moment. But the sobering conversation does temper it slightly, drawing a sigh and closing her eyes when her head returns to its lean against his shoulder. "Well, if I said I didn't prefer that to a staid and unmoving existence, I would be lying," she tells him in a self-deprecating manner. "And you're right, of course, but I don't know how much we can find on this side, either, if we're trying to dig into the nature of this place. I suppose we could be a touch more discerning as to where we go, and the reasons for going, however." She drums her fingers absently on her knee. "I'll have to talk to Anne, soon."

His wry observation regarding Margaret's childhood tilts a grin on her lips. "Imagine that. Hyacinth managed to pull memories out of this map, and a handkerchief we found hidden in Thomas' cufflinks case. I think..." She pauses. "I think that the memory from the handkerchief was recent, probably after the funeral." She turns her face back up to meet his eyes. "Might be easier if I showed you what Hyacinth showed me."

Her hand finds his, laces her fingers through, her eyes shutting and dropping the portcullis, her mental defenses unfolding in preparation for his visit, if he chooses.

Alexander sighs. "I know. And I love you for it, even though it also terrifies me." He smiles, and when she rests her head on his shoulder, he tilts his own so that he can gently lay his cheek on her hair, breathing in the scent of her fresh from the shower. "And I need to talk to Patrick. See if he'll let us poke around in the basement of the House. And maybe warn us of what parts will try to eat us." He falls silent as she goes on, thoughtfully listening. When he feels her defenses part, he raises the link gently but with confidence, forging a bridge between their minds. As always, there's a thrill of joy and pleasure when their minds join, for him, and one he doesn't bother to even try to hide. He is delighted to be close to her this way.

"You say that now," Isabella teases him, though there's unmistakable affection underscoring her tone, her eyes half-closing at the warm weight he presses against her. His cheek fits against her hair, damp as it is and cool from evaporation, the scent of her as always a subtle thing - that faint hint of strawberries but without its usual briny touch. It's been so long since she's been out to sea, and this close, he can sense it too, how much every part of her yearns for it and is looking forward to the warmer months when she can return to its embrace.

His thrill of joining with her in this way - and outside of intense, intimate moments - fills her, and he would be able to taste her answer the moment his stars invade the darkened spaces of her torn-up potential, passing over the draconic shape and its coruscating flames, a single green eye focusing on him when he slips into her mind, the brief nuzzle of recognition before the great beast coils back up and takes a nap. Over the blackened desert that Isidore Reede had caused, and left behind, into the chasm until he comes across the child-guardian of its inner depths and enters the library where happier memories float around in glass bubbles and light is occasionally fragmented by shattered stained glass. There's a new addition, when he ventures within - a large astrolabe spinning on its axis, to replay the memories from Isabella's point of view.

He would recognize the background - the offices of the Historical Society.

There's a box filled to the brim with belongings that belong to a man, clearly, given the vacuum-sealed set of neckties on top. There are yearbooks resting in neat piles; he would recognize Isabella's fingers when she hands the map to Hyacinth Addington, who reads it with a careful brush of fingers, and turning up a 'projection' of the memory into the ceiling:

He'd get a sense of excitement and another childish thrill, like it's Christmas morning, and he's about to open presents. There are scratching sounds that he can hear - a pencil? Lead on a page, accelerated breathing, as if the viewer had been running. "Just write monsters," another says, off-camera, so to speak, but it's difficult to determine whether it is a boy or a girl. But since these are supposedly Margaret Addington's memories, there's only one other person who it could be, if it isn't her.

"Quit being so bossy." Even in those years, Margaret Addington is not adverse to shelling out commands. Her voice is a child's. The lead pencil scratches 'MONSTERS HERE' on the page with an arrow onto the map. Color must have come later.

Her companion whines. "But where's the pond? This doesn't make any sense. Look here, the pond should be right over there. Come on, let's track back to The House," the capital letters come through, even in the memory, "and see if that takes us..."

<<I found that curious, also.>> If the archaeologist is confident in life, she is even moreso here, power and an innate sensuality wreathing her words and brushing over the spokes of his glassine stars. <<About the pond. And The House.>>

He is a blanket of stars over her varied landscape, haloed in light and dark, with hints of aurora as he studies her, the bright, shimmering colors carrying his love and worry for her all at once, bleeding through his normal mental discipline. His touch is a wind, caressing the dragon, ruffling the hair of the younger, scarred guardian, and slipping lightly over book and banister as it makes its way to the astrolabe. Spears of light come through the ruined ceiling, bathing the astrolabe in reflected warmth from unseen suns.

<<They were children, once.>> Alexander likes children, and there's a rueful affection in his mental voice, a sadness for the adults that these two kids became, even as he studies them. <<Addington House, probably. It must have a significant presence over there. That would make sense. It seems to be the epicenter of numerous...events. I wonder if the pond moves, over there? Or if Margaret, even as young as she is, had reasons for leaving the pond off.>>

<<They were.>> Isabella agrees, her answering affection and the intensity of what she feels for him - Love sharp enough to cut, and of such blistering, incandescent heat as to incinerate a body from within - bathing his striations of color, ribbons of flame rippling over the shelves at every straightforward note; only an academic can think of books that do not burn, after all. Her fingers tighten further into his in the physical world when his emotions temporarily find their seats in the well of her soul and she turns her face to press her mouth against his, parting for a kiss imbued with fire, her heart racing within her chest. She knows he loves her, he's said and demonstrated it repeatedly, but to inject her directly with it is a different sensation entirely.

<<And yes, probably, but I think it might've taken a different form on the other side, judging by the way they colored it so lovingly on the map.>> Pink and gold, inundated by hearts. <<A place of fantasy, and safety....at least, for them, maybe. They remind me plenty of Sid and myself, at their age. We found monsters, also, but we were undaunted.>> It was their birthright, her brother had said. Why should they be afraid?

The astrolabe stops, and starts to turn the other way. <<This came from the handkerchief. I think this is a more recent memory.>>

He'd see Isabella's fingers again, recognize their length and slenderness, the color of her complexion, plucking a monogrammed handkerchief with T.A. in the corner, unfolding it from its hidden spot in a black lacquered box carrying an array of very expensive cufflinks. This to Hyacinth again, keeper of her grandfather's legacy. Another projection:

He is back there, in that gray space where time and place have no meaning, where weather is nonexistent and endlessness presses on his bones like intangible weights. "It never lead anywhere before." Thomas, this time, adult and slightly peevish...and most definitely drunk. The colors blur, the projection distorted in the edges to confirm the influence of depressants in his blood, though there are lights flashing in his periphery and familiar music: Elvis. The carousel. Ahead of him, he can see water and a glimpse of glittering fish with small halos on their heads, fluttering in the air, and diving back down....

Margaret's voice answers. "Well, it clearly leads somewhere now. That's the pond right there. But look." She turns, pointing her aged finger off to the left. "The House is completely gone. What have these little bastards done." The older woman starts venturing towards the direction in which she gestured, quiet mutters filling Alexander's ears, about how they'll never find the hospital at this rate...and those meddling kids, surely they're to blame.

Alexander responds to the kiss, and to the heat of her affection, that aurora strengthening, bathing them in light and its own sharp form of heat, more like a heated blade than a fire - precise and cutting, delving into the heart of each of them. He returns the kiss hungrily, his eyes half-closing as he enjoys the feel of her mind and her body at once.

<<Mmmm...hnm? Oh. Sorry. Was distracted. By something. Can't imagine what.>> Warmth and amusement, a bright teasing tone to his mental words. There's a wistfulness, at her characterisation of the Veil for children, or for some children, and the feeling of those memories pressing just out of reach. <<I would have stayed away from the monsters, if I could,>> he admits, ruefully. While there's something dogged and determined in him, he's never quite been the adventurer that his love is, and the awareness of the difference - as well as the admiration he has for her boldness - filters through their bond.

He watches the second memory. <<The House is completely gone. Maybe not Addington House, then? How odd. What could we have done? How much do we change this place without even realizing what we're doing?>> A flash of fear in him, then, for the havoc their clumsy flailing might wreak on things they barely understand, and frustration for the lack of knowledge.

His hungry response is one that she drinks in rapaciously, in turn, her arms shifting to curl around him, unable to help but seek out more; more of his taste, his touch, everything that he freely gives her, though she isn't above taking. Her fingers dive into the mass of half-curls behind his head, luxuriating in the way they slip between her seeking digits; even with how she mentally tugs on him, playful even here, and in this. He'd feel her smile against his mouth at his distraction, an apology she doesn't actually mean bleeding through their link - sorry but not sorry. She just can't help herself, body and mind focused intently on Alexander Clayton and everything he makes her feel, at the exclusion of everything else.

<<I think you could imagine plenty, for one who isn't predisposed to liking fiction.>> His warm amusement is mirrored by her own, following the teasing flicker of her fire-ribbons against his stars and loosely tangling around them, silk and heat working in concert to entice him to linger. <<Though I suppose that doesn't stay fiction for long when you're so wonderful at following through.>> It's those words about the monsters that blunts that earlier sharpness, something soft and tender pulsing through their link, reflected by the subtle gentleness that her physical embrace adopts, fingers stroking through his hair. <<Proof in the pudding that you're smarter than anyone else I know, including myself. Though I'm happy to know that in spite of this, you like that about me.>> A teasing flicker, a kiss of flame.

...and the storms in her become gentle again, tasting that apprehension, and his frustration. Everything about her becomes soothing the moment she senses it. <<I've been trying to figure that out, or even come up with a theory.>> Her own ruefulness is one he can detect easily in this state, as well as a flurry of confusion. <<In the first memory, the pond isn't there, but The House was, and in the second, more recent memory, the pond is there, but The House isn't. And Margaret seems to be aware that the Veil isn't static - though if this is after the funeral, why were they still looking for the hospital? Unless it's a completely different thing from the Asylum?>>

But there's exhilaration, also; she is not fearless, he can easily find the more temperate notes of her realization as to how dangerous poking around the Veil is...but there is something that isn't there before. A warping of a kind, like frenetic Jazz coming from an unseen phonograph drowning out Isabella's own awareness that she ought to be more than a little scared. A small bit of very faded and ghostly giggling, that vanishes just as quickly from almost the moment he hears it.

Alexander rolls them as she presses herself against him, lowering her gently to the faded carpet as he continues to kiss her. There's just static on the line for a long moment, nothing but the waves of pleasure and an almost reverent awe in her presence here, with him, body to body and mind to mind. <<mmmaybe...a few ideas...come to mind...>> he allows, and intentionally or not, vivid pictures of those ideas slide down the link, all tangled limbs and sensations of pleasure, both remembered and imagined.

Frustration? It's only a memory at first, pushed away by more urgent, primal concerns. But, well, the mention of Margaret is a reliable dampener of certain feelings, and his focus returns, bit by bit, to the conversation. <<God only knows. Maybe to try and undo whatever we did? Maybe to see if there's a backup Baxter to shred back there?>> A pause. His focus is sharpening again, for all that his lips and jaw nuzzle the sides of her face, the curve of her neck. <<I've actually been wondering that. Old Lindon tried to burn several families, back then. Including the Whitehouses. I should look into Whitehouse history - see if it is as checkered and odd as the Addingtons and Baxters. Want to help me research?>>

Isabella's body shifts, gathered up in the circle of Alexander's stronger own and there's no resistance, or even the willingness to expend it, in her when her back hits the carpet and his warm, heavy weight bears down on her, trapping her between a rock and a hard-hewn wall. Damp hair tangles in faded textile and arms shift to draw him closer, a leg slinging over his hip - as if to anchor him there, and ensure that he doesn't go anywhere. Her kisses deepen, passion becoming less and less subsumed the longer they continue, and the deeper he dives...and the further she welcomes him into the spaces within herself that she doesn't open to anyone's psychic journeys but him.

His imagination threatens to burn her from the inside out, exchanging flame with flame; she barters them with pleasure, white-hot and intense, feeding and entangling him within the iridescent threads of her wholehearted surrender, and plucking at him until he gives up more. <<This is cheating.>> An old argument, and playfully made, dueling him with her own remembrances and mischievous fantasies, and velvet promises of what she intends to do to and with him once she gets the chance, chasing each and every one with a kiss and how her hands start to roam over him in her implacable, restless way. She may be clothed, still, but mind-to-mind, she bares herself for him, unable and unwilling to hide her emotions from his power, showing and letting him experience, for himself, just how deeply and severely he affects her with just a single kiss; as if nothing else in the universe matters, returning the pleasure he gives her in a circuitous loop.

Lashes flutter half-shut, her mouth finding his crown when his own finds her throat, and tastes how her pulse races underneath her skin because of him. She shivers underneath him, though it isn't just inspired by his ministrations - the idea that they were hunting for another of theirs to sacrifice causes a shudder to ripple over the shelves, and causes the astrolabe to spin faster. <<You know I'll always help.>> The words are confident, but dreamy - impassioned if only because he's in her mind and she breathes in his presence within it like much-needed air. <<We tried to chase the Weber family before and it led us to how the same thing happened to the Waltons in New England. If the Whitehouses have a similar history...>> Her hand tracks up to cup his cheek, tilting his face slightly to nip at his ear and murmur into it with her physical voice, something intimate, but rendered unintelligible by passion. <<....and I think we should try and find The House, also.>>

<<All's fair in love and war,>> Alexander says, smugly, and if the first images were unintentional, the ones that follow are not - he teases and torments her with glimpses of their bodies entwined, of the sensation of his mouth on her most sensitive skin, fingers exploring every curve, the graze of teeth and tangle of them, together. There's a sensation like a sigh, breathing along the surface of her mind, even as his physical breath caresses her skin. <<Sure. House hunting. Whatever you want,>> he assures her, mildly distracted.

Okay, more than mildly.

There's a laugh, but it isn't heard or even seen, but felt within the confines of Isabella's library, bright and brilliant with pops of vibrant color to suggest her mirth. It's followed by what feels like a groan - just as much as a mock-chastisement of his incorrigibility as it is tied with actual pleasure because he only cheats harder. Electric sparks crackle over the psychic space they both occupy, leaping over his stars and clinging to them as they ride over streamers of fiery energy and plays with the images he introduces her to - spicing it with her own memories; of how he tastes and feels against her, how welcome his heavier weight actually is and how complete she feels when he invades her in every way that matters. While here, he knows, on some level, that she finds it so galling, how effortlessly he kindles her desire - literally with a thought - but he'd find that she loves it, too, and would never change it for all the Spanish gold lost in the oceans.

<<In some occasions, Love IS war.>> Impish fingers start tugging at his clothes, to find his skin and caress his spine warmly; the patterns she draws on him mirror into their shared mindspace, when these colorful traces of her entangle further with his stars and pursue the after-images left behind by his teasing torments, sharpening the ones she's particularly in the mood for. <<But remember. You said it, whatever I want. No takebacks.>>

Not that it would be difficult to guess who she wants at the moment.

<<Now who's cheating?>> Alexander accuses, a delighted chuckle that's felt more than heard. The images she sharpens are added to by his own mind, laid out before them both like gifts. <<But...yes. Whatever you want, my love. I am yours.>> Only that. Simply that, before he lowers his mouth to her skin again, and takes the war from the battlefield of the mind to a more physical field.

He'd feel Isabella's smile against his hair, her body wrestling with his - to push at his shoulders and coax them both to roll over again until her hair spills over one shoulder, her half-unzipped hoodie tangling somewhere past. <<I'm only fighting fire with fire.>> It almost sounds like a song, how it slips through his stars.

Her triumphant perch over him doesn't last very long though before she leans forward for another kiss, open, hungry and insistent, as if sealing their present engagement with it. The gauntlet thrown before the duel really starts.

<<Mine.>> That sounds like a sigh, in turn. <<And I am yours, however long you want to keep me.>> Her teeth gently worry his bottom lip and as she sinks herself further against and into him, the truth of it whispers past his senses just before the point when words start to lose their meaning.

<<I love you.>>