[ Ready, with pin digits attached, looks like waiting for him a strip of black-pebbled beach, warmed by a day's sunshine. The light penetrates only the surface — beneath the windless ripples of lake water (dappled all in blues: Prussian, midnight, patches of turquoise where shallow) there is a bracing cold, waiting to put curious hands on swimmers caught unawares. But Roza knows this land, this water, this tender late-afternoon sky. Soon dark will spread broad wings over the horizon and blot out their closest star, leaving room only for the ones that watch from a distance.
Soon it will be nighttime, which is when the land starts to really get interesting. She hopes he gets to see that, too.
But for now there is only this: the long shape of Roza, brown skin contrasting against white underwear (she did not bring a swimsuit), stood like an imitation of an Olympic diver at the peak of one long dock, protruding out over the deepest part of the lake. She is barefoot and grinning, teeth showing. Her body moves back and forth from left to right, ballerina feet prepared for motion. Her blue Jeep is poorly parked between two spaces, tailgate slung open, where a bed of towels sit waiting.
When she sees him, she's going to scream and then jump. Or jump and then scream, depending on how cold that lake really is. ]
[the car's engine rumbles through the silence, breaks peace before he cuts it early– another poor parking job in the lot. there are two different energies here, one of playful wildness and the other a blanketing threat. the people who know his car don't want to the thing he shines his headlights on.
but it's quiet when he steps out and scans for the shape of roza, the one who does want to be in his headlights. it takes him a few moments, seconds used to stutter out a laugh when she screeches, voice ringing in his ears even after she's submerged. his clothes are stripped - haphazard and uncaring down to his briefs – and he runs once he's thrown them aside, heavy footfalls in sand and then barreling onto the dock. he's much less graceful, a burst of unruly energy catapulting overboard, a stumble compared to her ballerina-nimble poise.
he goes deep, carried by the weight of impact, and when he breaches the surface and he can howl like he's never been in the unforgiving cold only water can bring before (he has, he's being dramatic) he looks for her, muscles in his face stuck on a grin from adrenaline.]
[ A time or two she has contemplated what it is about him that unlocks this wildness in her, even by her own standards; she's always performing, playing, cajoling, and it redoubles under the headlights, as though they were really spotlights on her stage. But maybe it's because Elias knows better than almost anybody (and he is the only witness to this time in her life that wasn't a cruelty during it) what it's like when all of that has been drained from her, when Roza was just a listless slip of a thing, waiting to die.
But that was years ago. Look at them now. Do they live well? Maybe not. But they live. With fingers digging into life, leaving bruises in sprays of yellow-purple proof that they existed outside their holding cells and medical documentation. To the contrary: here it's self-administered chemicals and loud music and laughter that rises up toward an empty heaven.
Under that water or above it, her body is a trained thing, muscles compact, fine-tuning a body that wants to give in to its own natural curves. Magic exacerbates her grace, allowing her deft little twists against the mild current, circling him in the water, like a smiling freshwater shark, buoyed by his yell. Her legs kick in circles, black hair slicked and dripping a rainfall against her shoulders and clavicle. Her attention zeroes in on Elias in preparation for a bolting away, back under the water. ]
I think so, too. 'Cause who else could do this — [ just one itsy-bitsy little splash, because she's a menace, but she's curious, too, where he's going with this, ] — and get away with it?
[being seen by roza is being narrowed in on with a giant magnifying glass. he couldn't avoid it then – when he'd wanted to – and he doesn't want to avoid it in the dark waters they share. she's a profound being, a creature with outside access. he doesn't have the words for how roza is, only the comfort his body feels. when she first came to him, he barely looked her in the eye, always her waist, or her shoulders, where the water trails down from her neck, and sometimes he defaults there in the curves of her body, before he reminds himself he's supposed to be looking and acknowledging her.
she forced him to look when the floor had always been the better option.
he can smile here, away from the gritty underworld he surrounds himself with. no mask, no distance he reserves for everyone else. when he shakes his head, droplets scatter from his hair into the lake.]
What–
[a speck of innocence between them for a split second before he returns the splash with a larger one. he's clumsy in the water, hardly the person to be sneaky with. he'd been so withdrawn before, sometimes it's as if he's making up for the sounds he never let himself make.]
I'm gonna get you back–
[the rest is swallowed by water (and gulped down accidentally) as he disappears beneath the surface, and maybe he is like the orca she assigned him when he bumps into her, hands grasping her ankles and climbing up and up and up to her waist to pull her under.]
[ These uninhibited windows into one another also serve as mirrors: feeling reflects into the opposite half, magnifying, building. Sunrays collecting energy. They bounce between bodies. Her heart thuds a merry rhythm inside her chest. Roza would swear that Elias could hear it. Elias and all the fish, and all the trees, and all the seabirds skimming the wide open skies ahead, all listening to the drum of her, beating in time with the universe.
She does remember when he was shy, during the SLC. She remembers when she was shy, too, after the SLC. Both states of being seem so many miles away, now. As though they had always been young but not that young, and they would never get any older. ]
What are you gonna do — whoa!
[ That aborted question is summarily answered, playful indignation the last thing that the shoreline sees before she is subsequently dunked. Her arms fling up under the waterline, hands creating a secondary splash zone that afflicts no one in particular, as they are totally alone.
Roza from thereon has two options. One, engage him in quote unquote combat. This is mostly a lot of twisting and tugging and squirming around, tactile and tough to hold as a cat resisting a bath. She tries that one first, a river of bubbles streaming from her mouth as her laughter is suppressed by the surge of water; she has to remind herself to clamp down. The second technique, and the one she tries next, involves locking onto him like a spider-monkey; in a sequence of very dramatic events occurring under the surface, she twists in, to face him, those long strong legs hitching around Elias's body. If she's going down, he's going with her. ]
[she exhales laughter and he chokes out bubbles with her, and they dance in their scrambling, underwater-slow way. for every bit of resistance she gives, he finds purchase somewhere, anywhere– a flying wrist or poking hand for a chance of playful overpowering, and at last her waist once more.
elias thinks about drowning. the quick, panicked thought rising in his chest and holding tight in his lungs as she spindles her legs around him. her body heat is a welcome one, warming skin to skin in the icy waters, but his thoughts lead him to the liminal space of endlessness around them. has he been drowned before? he doesn't know. it doesn't matter.
caught you.
but she caught him, and now they float in this mutually assured destruction face-to-face. he has seconds before his lungs start to burn. entwined and sinking toward an abyss, he is found and hooked by roza, hooked by the only person he will ever let impale him. tender in silence, he takes her face in both of his hands, fingers splaying through sleepy tendrils of hair. elias gazes into her until the fire behind his ribs becomes unbearable and he looks as though he might kiss her. he does, but on her forehead, like a secret he wants to keep for them.
the extraction is slower than their playfight, and he gives her a gentle push toward the surface first, though some urgency does bleed through when he can breathe again, chest heaving and begging for oxygen.]
I wasn't made for water– [he spits, the lake is caught in his throat.] I really wasn't.
[ Intuitively, she feels the hum of something like panic, calling long-distance. Remember me? it says, and then more seriously, more threateningly: no, seriously. Remember me. Her legs tie him to her, and pull him away from memory, through time, space, and water.
Correspondingly, the kiss feels ceremonial. Like a coda. She hovers in place for its reception, as swirls of underwater flora and fauna take note of their small and intimate ritual. Bearing witness. Roza likes it: someone should know, even though it's just for them. But fish will not tell any stories except to each other. ]
I don't think I was, either. [ It's said like a rough-throated confession, the normal sweet soprano of her voice made husky by lack of air and all that water. ] But for some reason, I do it anyway.
[ Her breathing begins to moderate itself, albeit only slightly. Roza hauls herself backward onto the dryish dock, slats of sunwarmed wood a welcome balm against all the bare skin scattered with light-catching droplets, body encased in a blanket of glimmering wet. Her underwear has correspondingly taken on a transparency, and rolls further beads down her ribcage and thighs. It feels good, Roza thinks, still smiling, open-mouthed. Tongue touching the back of her teeth (and there's glitter there, too, in the form of her piercing). She stretches out on her back, black-painted toes scrunching against the chill. Her dark head is tipping sidelong toward Elias, so that she can watch him. ]
[is he reacting to her, or is she reacting to him? in the expanse of water reflecting sky and sun and their shadows rippling, reaching away from their bodies, he can't know. likely never will. he treads in place, watching roza climb onto the dock and sprawl, catlike in lazy pleasure. he doesn't know what animal she'd be, but she picked his so easily, connections second nature (maybe first) in her universal mind.]
Why are you asking me? I won.
[obviously. he's decided he's more salt water than fresh; rough edges and ready to bite. elias stays in the lake a little while longer despite his initial rejection of it, eventually following suit in dragging himself out. wet fabric clings to his skin, heavy droplets trailing down his body and soaking the wood as he surveys the beach, one full turnaround from their cars to the black sands and the water lapping its edges, to the sky and finally roza. he's blocking out the light, his shadow becoming hers. he will always do this– a check, too many nights alone spent waiting for danger. laying down beside her with one arm bent behind his head, he tips his chin in her direction, brows raised.]
As long as it wants us, maybe. But if you want to go somewhere else, [ one leg extending so she can bump him with her knee, which thusly transitions into rolling over onto her stomach, half-propped up on her elbows, the eager sun slipping warm hands against the small of her back, her shoulders, ass and thighs, ] we have that freedom.
[ Side by side, inches apart, she can feel the heat from his body, surging upward, as hers is, in an attempt to combat the chilly lingering effects from the lake water. When allowed to exist naturally, this is what a living thing does, balancing its internal workings against the weight of its environment. As with the word freedom, naturally carries with it a lacework of scarring also better thought of as internal. She watches the color of his eyes. The person he is now is many years divorced from the boy who would not look her directly in her own, but the eyes are the same, in shade, in clarity. He's tough, now. Tougher than the little girl from the bad side of Nome Borough. Built a shell strong as the bruiser trucks that come through the auto shops. People are afraid of him now.
What did the girl in that movie say? When you grow up, your heart dies. Roza suspects that she is in some way never going to grow up; too much of her is eternally unhealed, still inside that white walled facility, still lying down on concrete with her head in another dimension, spirit seeking sweet oblivion. Looking at Elias, really looking with her little-girl heart, she thinks, you either. You're not allowed to grow up any more, either. Please don't get any tougher.
She doesn't say those things. She leans in quick and startling and kisses his cheek, the surprising cousin to his chastely ceremonial forehead kiss witnessed by waves and fishes. ]
You pick. Since you won. [ This is paired with a playful eyeroll, as though she were indulging him. ] We can see the sunset anyplace.
[a leg bumps him, so naturally he has to bump back in his own way, the back of his hand grazing her shoulder in a languid motion while his mouth forms a crooked smile. open spaces make him nervous, but that's the trauma talking. years in small rooms make someone want to be the biggest predator, the thing in the corner everyone worries about, only there aren't any corners on the beach.]
This is cool, [maybe his inner child hears her pleading and she makes him go back in time, where his words seemed softer and existed without certainty. so many of his nervous tics bled out, replaced with angry glances and cheeks ground between teeth. he catches himself tapping again, fingers playing piano on his skull. the kiss surprises him out of it, makes him look at her with feigned indignance.] are you trying the reverse psychology on me?
[the reverse psychology, like how people say the marijuanas or facebooks because he could talk a mile in kilos and he'd never need a map for the rest of his life and he can look at a building and know its skeleton, but sometimes he just doesn't know how to say things. that's probably why he did so bad in school – too many kids requiring too much patience – and the bullying didn't help.]
We can stay. [plus it means he can roll to his side, mirroring, propping himself up. he can catch their cars in his peripheral, over roza's head, but mostly he wants a better view of her body. mostly.] You want me to see the sunset here, right?
[ She's not oblivious to the ways he indulges her, where maybe somebody else would elicit less generosity. The lake beach has no corners, and thickets of trees shroud potential onlookers less mild-mannered than freshwater fish. But to Roza, the world is a tapestry of sounds and strange tastes, a sensory experience writ large; she feels each presence, each blade of grass. Every word he says to her, too, has its little soul. It makes up the whole of a sentence, and the sentence feels warm all over in ways the sun can't imitate. ]
Yeah! Yeah, please. Sometimes you can see the Auroras, too. [ Everybody knows about Roza's thing with the Northern Lights she calls to sit with her. Not like a crown; she is no princess, nobody's queen, eschews the confines of those words even in play. Wild things don't have titles. The lights come like a living thing, like a lover, like a spirit. She's excited by even the thought, a ghostly green catching in the sloe of her eyes. ]
As for reverse psychology, though... [ His occasional malapropisms always flow through her without commentary, and rarely correction; she understands what he means. In private, language is theirs to do what they will with, and Roza's verbal choices often take on a cast all their own, too. Instead she uses her peculiar witch grace to maneuver closer to Elias, hands and knees guiding the sinuous snake of her spine. Flat-palmed, she pushes him onto his back, fairly firm about it, and from there she leans over him, still not quite touching, hair not quite long enough to tickle his face. Not quite, or maybe not yet. It would be easy to make contact, but unfortunately the dead gods of their world did not have the foresight to keep Roza Zaripova from becoming a goddamn tease. ]
I'm more direct, you know that. I'm just gonna bribe you with beer and music. Except I don't have beer. [ The reason for her clambering becomes evident: she intends to roll onto her side on the opposite of him, where her phone is sitting in a pile of clothing. Boots, skirt, sweater, torn-up tights, and a Google Pixel with a battered Hello Kitty case on it, harboring all the tunes they could possibly want.
Will she make it? It depends on both her distractibility and Elias's good will. ]
[the auroras. he huffs, rolling his eyes and tilting his head back like staying is the biggest ask she could suggest and he's exaggerating his discontent.
roza's magic is foreign sometimes, in the unexpected sense. things happen to him when things don't just happen to her. she was born into her abilities, where elias ignorantly decided the center pushed powers into his system to make him some kind of super soldier like in the comics.
he catches something there briefly when she touches him, back against the dock once again and mouth parting when memories and not-memories combine into something else he hasn't quite defined. he sees her reaching for her phone before it happens – blurry and quick – and the actions that follow. a fucked up deja vu.]
–Not beer, but you can bribe me with something else.
[she teases and he takes advantage of opportunities given to him. one strong arm wraps around her waist and squeezes her close, a mimicking of constrictor strength, a leg wrapping around her own. his other hand finds her face, bringing her further in. the kiss is heated– not a holy ceremony, but from someone who's loved and lost, savoring a lover's taste like a final goodbye.
every kiss is a goodbye for elias. he has water on his tongue, masking cigarettes and hints of sugar from the candies he keeps in his dashboard. his thumb grazes below her chin, pressing into her throat.]
Get your phone. [he murmurs, then smacks the curve of her ass. giddy up.]
[ For his trouble, Elias earns himself a series of interesting sounds: a startled high-toned huff when he tugs her in close, and something slower and deeper when his mouth makes contact with hers, a kittenish half-moan that moves into more of an exhale when they break contact. But all throughout she is melting into him, all the infinite sweetness of her waiting to caramelize into something hard and tough, one day. Maybe. But not yet. Now she's another kind of candy, curling close, hip-to-hip, hooked by his leg and only too willing to keep that way. But she still yelp-laughs, when he slaps her ass, pelvis jolting against his. No precognition will help her not do that. Roza could see it coming a hundred times and still the sensitive nature of her skin would react like it was the first time anybody'd ever touched her, waking up something roving and wild in the process.
Incidentally, when she starts to disentangle, she drags her thigh right between his legs, slow and deliberate and just as incorrigible. ]
Don't you get me started. [ It's a complaint without real heat, because hers is an engine he knows intimately, easy for him to drive into a steady purr, libido like a Mercedes in a body she'd characterize as more of a Dodge Neon, tongue in cheek. Roza peels away lazily, kneeling amid her belongings, bare knees on scraped old wood. She watches Elias out of the corner of her eye even as her thumbs navigate the phone interface.
Jimi Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower comes winding and twirling its way out of the tiny phone speaker, and it has the same hypnotic effect all good music does on Roza: eyes lidding a fraction lower, narrow frame swaying minutely in place, a girl possessed. She sinks back down next to Elias, on her back once more, and one hand lifts to wave gently through the air, a secondary mimicry of how her body moved; it makes it way down her arm, through her chest, her stomach. Her hips. Dancing without dancing, the girl someplace else that's also very much here, as though the lake, and Elias, and Roza with it all occupy its own sliver of time. ]
C'mere, [ she says, ] c'mere.
[ To what end? None in particular. Only that she wants him to hold onto her, like the song might float her right up to those Auroras of which she speaks. ]
I kind of want to dance, 'cause I have all this energy. But I don't want to get up, either. What do you think?
[when she yelps, his grin is lazy, teeth biting into his lower lip. he'd like to drag her back before she even tries to scroll through her phone, tempted by the warmth of her, the skin on skin, how languidly she teases before pulling herself away. his eyes flit to her hands, the remaining dewdrops on her skin from her hair, the muscles of her legs flexing with every shift.
there are gaps in his memory, great big blocks of nothing cascading and pulling wool over his eyes. if roza has seen him during times he doesn't remember, he can't tell. she never treats him any different.]
Maybe I can think of something similar.
[he doesn't do dancing like roza unless you call going to a club and pushing through sweaty bodies for one shady deal 'dancing'. she dances how people on molly dance, like the music takes over them completely and the beat flows through their limbs to their soul. she has to keep moving, or else the world will stop. so he obeys, partially, adjusting to her needs, nudging one arm under her head to wrap around her, hand resting on her shoulder while the other glides up her thigh, her hip, her waist, fingertips tapping to the beat of jimi's guitar on her skin.]
What am I going to do with you?
[breathed out around a low chuckle, the gliding of his hand becomes a grip pressing into her soft curves, pulling her closer, as close as he can get her without being inside of her. his leg pushes between hers, thigh pressing against her wet underwear, and they taper on the edge of him ready to tumble on top of her and vice versa like this. his heart is thumping in his chest, and he can't remember the last time he had sex that wasn't just getting laid. roza isn't that, he's too attached for it to be so simple.]
[ She never has to audition with Elias. If she's strange, well. He already knew that. And he wants to keep touching her anyway, somehow, a thing that her supernatural insight into him cannot explain, but is glad of; each brushing contact brings a shimmer of gooseflesh to bare arms, rippling almost down to the place where her tattoo sits. ]
See, this is a kind of dancing. You're already getting warm.
[ It's in that complication that Roza really comes to life, water for the garden that is her excitement. She moves directly against his thigh so that he can see her eyes change, pupil swallowing the vestiges of near-black. Her breathing stutters, mouth opening by a millimeter.
Haven't they always been good at this?
When boys came and went, when her body was a cage she let anybody into in hopes they'd be the one to finally cut her out of it forever, when married women from Outside were calling well-deserved epithets down the phone line, when she came to terms with being nobody's dream girl, he made her feel a little bit good again. A lot good. She wants Elias to feel that way, too. To forget his own forgetting, living exclusively in the moment of sensory feedback loop, a long parade of nerves lighting their way. In the moments she wants to give him, there is no passenger. There is no past, no SLC, no police, no sirens, no courtrooms. Only her mouth and the color of his eyes and his hands, leaving marks whether the ordinary eye sees them or not: he may bruise her, he may not. But his fingerprints are there. Proof of existence, his mind, his independent will. Each element of realness half-responsibility, half-freedom. Half-curse, half-blessing.
Her willfulness is alive, too. Her hand hooks in the longer part of his hair, first gentle, and then enough to elicit a sweet sting, palm stretched wide, all fingers full (she learned this by having her own hair pulled by partners, pleasurably; you try for big amounts, not pieces). ]
Tell me some ideas, [ offered half-muffled, as in between sentences, her lips are patterning bitey little kisses across his throat, heading down to collarbones — she'll have to let go of his hair to go lower stil, ] I thought of a few things to do with you, out there in the Gates. The sky there, Elias. The sky with no artificial lights. Just you and the grizzly bear and the stars.
I think, [ here she does let go, ] it's the only place I've ever felt real. Except maybe right now.
[ Less talking transpires now, but she thinks he'll know what she means. She bites over his heart so that she can taste it beating on her psychic tongue, two pulses in time. ]
[there's little resistance when her fingers dig through his hair, and a glimpse of a more pliant elias shows. lashes fluttering against his cheeks yet refusing to close, entranced by the blacks of roza's eyes with defiant intensity, and those eyes are deeper than any waters he'd ever set foot in. a gruff noise leaves his throat, hips grinding sluggishly for friction. no urgency or greed in how he touches her, though he does touch her, squeezing flesh and sliding his hand up and under her bra to palm over her breast.]
Uh–
[he's bad at this– keeping his head somewhere else when he'd rather be talking about what's on his mind (her teeth, her voice, her body, the heat in below his stomach and the arousal between them). if the words were falling anywhere but roza's lips, honeyed over his skin and sending hitched pleasure up his spine, he'd be taking them with a grain of salt. they're genuine, and genuine is hard to come by.
he can't focus on a fantasy when he has her in his arms.]
Shit. I don't, [he really has to focus here. he's too distracted, too caught up in their entangled bodies.] god, I think about watching movies with you 'til we fall asleep.
[and the hum of the tv turns into static, and her head is in his lap and there's peace, at least he can pretend there's peace in dozy comfort, but he doesn't think about it for very long, and when he pinches her nipple gently between his thumb and index finger, he's bringing himself back to the moment.]
[ She likes the push-pull between them, two big dogs with a toy between their teeth. The toy's name is power, and sometimes the wiry muscle of him means he's got more; sometimes her audacity gives Roza greater purchase. The balance can shift mid-sentence. It is rarely consistent, and therefore always exciting. The barbell through her nipple in conjunction with his casual groping makes her breath enter her lungs via needy little hiss, Roza's own hips rolling forward before she can think to stop herself. Easy, easy. She doesn't quite know if that easy should be preceded by 'take it' or 'you are so'. But he feels good, and touching him back feels even better; he's easy, too. Easy to want.
When Elias calls time, she's down to his second rib, one hand tracing lazy circles with the edges of her nails against his hipbone. She stops, and leans her cheek against his lower stomach, skin on skin, heat on heat. Those dark eyes regard him from under the soft span of her lashes. ]
Yeah, we can. But I don't know if you mean the part where I put my mouth on you, or the part where I fall asleep with you. [ Two modalities of thought not so easily managed concurrently, she'll admit. This sort of question she's asking is the kind of thing she used to let hurt her own feelings, rankling at the fragile self-esteem Roza built mostly on her sexual availability. But Elias is different, and she doesn't think he'd do her that way, not on purpose; she knows what part of the set-up here might be bothering him. ]
You wanna go in the back of my car and figure it out?
[ The big blue Jeep has four walls, navigable exits, and still allows for a view of the sky, which has begun its slow sweeping dark, brushstrokes of deep indigo painting the horizon. ]
[maybe there isn't a 'stop' button for him, but there is a 'pause', one she allows him to press even when he thinks he's fucked something up in hesitating. not hesitating, really, but there's a lack of compartmentalizing happening, and a smooth transition from thought for her is a rough one for him.
he's reluctant to pull away, mouth slanting into something close to a frown. truthfully, he's relieved for the offer of a change of scenery. as much as roza can engulf him, he's on edge, and it's in the tension of his shoulders, the alert energy behind his eyes. muscles hint at relaxing and he brushes a strand of hair away from her face. thank you.
in mixed frustration – 90% sexual, 10% at himself – elias nods, then realizes that's not a proper answer.]
We can do both. I'll talk dirty or about what I wanna do with you, but not at the same time. Or I don't have to talk. Depends if you want me here, [and he grinds his hips into hers for emphasis, then presses a finger to her forehead.] or here.
[it's about what she wants here, really. he'll be in her head no matter what he does, and whether she'd sooner feel good with him or talk about movies is up to her. looking at roza, he doesn't know if he has to tell her how much he wants her– that part is written over his face and how he extricates himself from her, which is done very badly (the good kind of bad) and involves his hands roaming over her bare skin and the small of her back, teasing the waistline of her panties. again, reluctant to be without her, again, enjoying how he excites her.
he carries her clothes back for her, picks up the ones he'd left carelessly around his car and places them in the jeep.]
Kinda late for the towels, huh?
[they're both mostly dry, but they provide some extra padding, sort of, and his palms flatten over the tailgate to bring himself in to the back of the jeep, a smooth motion, one he's done many times. yes, this is better. the comment is about as haphazard as how he'd tossed his clothes and not meant to be answered, but he is a bit chilled, and if she doesn't crawl on top of him again he'll be reaching for his shirt.]
[ These intermittent brushes of contact do nothing to bring her back down from her physical orientating to him, to dissuade the feeling that a little part of her orbits him, a person with strong enough gravity to ground what inside her wants to float up to the stars showing their distant faces. Therefore she sounds faintly distracted, here: ]
The sun took good care of us.
[ The ensuing chill, the encroaching night, the cover of her Jeep roof, though — it makes Roza more aware of her body's fragility in a way she hadn't felt when out on the dock. It's that as much as her natural inclination to touch him that brings her closer, winding in. Like the tattoo, she's always either serpent or mongoose, and today the Queen Cobra's winning. Roza curls close, though not quite on, so she can press her chest against the length of his arm, her mouth to the set of his jaw. In the shade she's no less lively, however; if anything, her audacity redoubles itself, flowing through the tactile drift of her hands across Elias's collarbone, as though making mapwork of the places she kissed, bit, tasted. ]
Asking me if I want to fuck around is kind of like asking me if I want to pick the music, you know? [ Girl like a feral dog, always a half-step too hungry, girl with a line of something untoward all in her veins and eyes and hair, like the stardust from an alien world where other girls don't behave in the ways she does; promiscuous and psychic, playful where she ought to be serious. You're supposed to play it cooler than she does. ] I want it.
So we're gonna play a game. One hour, you decide. We watch something, you get head, I tell you one of my good tundra stories, I run back into the lake and come back with a fish in my teeth, [ speaking of unserious, ] you tell me what to do. Whatever it is. But after the hour, I get to be in charge. My turn.
You down?
[ The chances of imminent criminality here are not zero, should he agree. ]
[he's not a complainer. he doesn't talk about how cold he is or if he's uncomfortable, because discomfort has an end. he can say he's paranoid, but the paranoia idles at some point, doesn't it? when he fights and his knees are dug into the floor around someone's shoulders and his fist has broken a jaw and they're telling him to stop, he tells them it'll end soon. he wouldn't have made a peep if roza hadn't made the suggestion.
she winds around him again, slots into place smooth and warm and his large hand finds her thigh and drags her leg over his. he loves her legs, loves where they lead even more, likes how when she stands the shapes of her blends seamlessly together.]
Roza, you're talking to a guy. I'm never gonna say no to head, especially when you say it like that.
Yeah, I'm fucking down.
[and does watching her count as watching something? feral dog girl, meet wanton boy, hot and heavy heat returning in how he looks at her, half-lidded and voice low. the walls of the jeep did something, opened him up, carved a piece out and left it outside. he leaves little room for a response, pulling her fully on his lap easily, expert fingers unclasping her bra one-handed while he leans his face in close, bumping her nose with his and nipping her lower lip.]
[ The sound she makes is cousin to a laugh, huffed out through her nose; her smile is closed-mouth, at least for now, and through the window the last few rays of sunlight catch the side of Roza's face and the color of her hair, true-black, raven's wing highlights of purple-black revealed. This reminds her of the better parts of Fairbanks, of Anchorage. Before she embarrassed her father, whose memory she distances herself from immediately; here, that doesn't matter. Here she's (young) adult, independent, and she chooses this man, this car, this promise of pleasure. She puts herself out alone on the wavering limb of her own desire and lets it guide her, more meteor than star. ]
Are you sure?
[ She transitions to a laid-back straddle, one hand skimming light over the beige roof of the ceiling, balancing the shape of Roza's body as she settles against him. The spread of her thighs means that her pelvis comes into contact with his, albeit through thin layers of clothing; there is again that blooming of black pupil, arousal writ large across her expression. Breath interrupted, heartbeat moving hard inside her ribcage.
Roza thinks there is still a little shyness in him, sometimes. He wants to know she's sure, too, and maybe to feel the new moon of her want making shadows from the insulated buildings that compose his grown-up strength. His has architecture. Four walls and a door. Exits. But she's good at that giving, at that limb-walking, and drawing control to her like she does her spirits. She's good for that. She just has to know she's doing it exactly the way that he likes, memorizing every telltale flicker of lash like a thing that lives off lust. ]
What iiif, [ the interruption here has more to do with the sting of his teeth, her torso curving in toward him as it goes bare, bra capsizing somewhere on the furred floor of the Jeep, ] mmn. Hang on.
[ If he wants biting, it's biting he will receive, her mouth slanting open to kiss Elias with a certain conquering grace, demanding, deliberate. The kind of kiss to steal a man's breath and make it her own, more specifically, sharp incisors catching here and there, unpredictable. Her head tips down in tandem with the roll of her hips, sending sparks and shockwaves flying through those open and receptive nerves. They tell her yes and again and more, so consequently the grinding adopts its own ruthless rhythm, even when she parts from him only by millimeters. A flush has made its way from collarbone to cheeks, mostly unseen but easy to feel. ]
What if we were in a plane crash? Orrrr... those aliens from Independence Day showed up? Or —
[ He's allowed to shut her up. It's his hour. The slow half-dry ride she's doing to wind him up has a double edge: her speech loses some of its radio-host clarity, tongue catching against the back of her teeth. She might unravel before he does. ]
[is he sure, and he shakes his head, dismissive of uncertainty now that she's straddling him, the cool breeze of air contrasting the sweet warmth of her body. she's talking, sort of, but then kissing, and he chases her mouth, tongue prodding past teeth and sliding over hers. she's demanding and he's hungry, her piercing rolling over flesh, teeth catching his lips and making him moan.]
I'm not hanging on– no, screw that.
[his hand latches to her hip, guiding her movements more confidently, pushing each grind down a little longer, a little harder. his cock aches beneath fabric, and she's on him just so that he can feel her folds parting over his covered length and he has to make an executive decision here-]
Oh my god–
[a harsh whisper, unclear whether he's exasperated from her teasing more questions or the steady roll of their hips is driving him crazy and pushing him in the right directions. probably the latter. he shoves two fingers in her mouth to press down on her tongue, her teeth digging into his skin, thumb pressed under her chin to catch her. he'd been caught before, now he's changing the narrative. the energy inside him switches, an 'off' to an 'on', and she said he could tell her what to do– who is he to deny an offer?]
–you need to something in your mouth, don't you? [elias levels with her here, makes her nod up and down, then back and forth. the pads of his fingers press harder.] Yes, no? Roza, [her name is dragged out when he grinds her down, sparking waves of needy pleasure.] I'm sure.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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okay
then I'll definitely catch you
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But as for catching me, I'll believe it when I see it
Or feel it. As the case is.
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you're challenging the wrong person
→ text/action.
OK OK we'll see. I'm ready.
[ Ready, with pin digits attached, looks like waiting for him a strip of black-pebbled beach, warmed by a day's sunshine. The light penetrates only the surface — beneath the windless ripples of lake water (dappled all in blues: Prussian, midnight, patches of turquoise where shallow) there is a bracing cold, waiting to put curious hands on swimmers caught unawares. But Roza knows this land, this water, this tender late-afternoon sky. Soon dark will spread broad wings over the horizon and blot out their closest star, leaving room only for the ones that watch from a distance.
Soon it will be nighttime, which is when the land starts to really get interesting. She hopes he gets to see that, too.
But for now there is only this: the long shape of Roza, brown skin contrasting against white underwear (she did not bring a swimsuit), stood like an imitation of an Olympic diver at the peak of one long dock, protruding out over the deepest part of the lake. She is barefoot and grinning, teeth showing. Her body moves back and forth from left to right, ballerina feet prepared for motion. Her blue Jeep is poorly parked between two spaces, tailgate slung open, where a bed of towels sit waiting.
When she sees him, she's going to scream and then jump. Or jump and then scream, depending on how cold that lake really is. ]
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but it's quiet when he steps out and scans for the shape of roza, the one who does want to be in his headlights. it takes him a few moments, seconds used to stutter out a laugh when she screeches, voice ringing in his ears even after she's submerged. his clothes are stripped - haphazard and uncaring down to his briefs – and he runs once he's thrown them aside, heavy footfalls in sand and then barreling onto the dock. he's much less graceful, a burst of unruly energy catapulting overboard, a stumble compared to her ballerina-nimble poise.
he goes deep, carried by the weight of impact, and when he breaches the surface and he can howl like he's never been in the unforgiving cold only water can bring before (he has, he's being dramatic) he looks for her, muscles in his face stuck on a grin from adrenaline.]
You're lucky, you know that?
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[ A time or two she has contemplated what it is about him that unlocks this wildness in her, even by her own standards; she's always performing, playing, cajoling, and it redoubles under the headlights, as though they were really spotlights on her stage. But maybe it's because Elias knows better than almost anybody (and he is the only witness to this time in her life that wasn't a cruelty during it) what it's like when all of that has been drained from her, when Roza was just a listless slip of a thing, waiting to die.
But that was years ago. Look at them now. Do they live well? Maybe not. But they live. With fingers digging into life, leaving bruises in sprays of yellow-purple proof that they existed outside their holding cells and medical documentation. To the contrary: here it's self-administered chemicals and loud music and laughter that rises up toward an empty heaven.
Under that water or above it, her body is a trained thing, muscles compact, fine-tuning a body that wants to give in to its own natural curves. Magic exacerbates her grace, allowing her deft little twists against the mild current, circling him in the water, like a smiling freshwater shark, buoyed by his yell. Her legs kick in circles, black hair slicked and dripping a rainfall against her shoulders and clavicle. Her attention zeroes in on Elias in preparation for a bolting away, back under the water. ]
I think so, too. 'Cause who else could do this — [ just one itsy-bitsy little splash, because she's a menace, but she's curious, too, where he's going with this, ] — and get away with it?
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she forced him to look when the floor had always been the better option.
he can smile here, away from the gritty underworld he surrounds himself with. no mask, no distance he reserves for everyone else. when he shakes his head, droplets scatter from his hair into the lake.]
What–
[a speck of innocence between them for a split second before he returns the splash with a larger one. he's clumsy in the water, hardly the person to be sneaky with. he'd been so withdrawn before, sometimes it's as if he's making up for the sounds he never let himself make.]
I'm gonna get you back–
[the rest is swallowed by water (and gulped down accidentally) as he disappears beneath the surface, and maybe he is like the orca she assigned him when he bumps into her, hands grasping her ankles and climbing up and up and up to her waist to pull her under.]
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She does remember when he was shy, during the SLC. She remembers when she was shy, too, after the SLC. Both states of being seem so many miles away, now. As though they had always been young but not that young, and they would never get any older. ]
What are you gonna do — whoa!
[ That aborted question is summarily answered, playful indignation the last thing that the shoreline sees before she is subsequently dunked. Her arms fling up under the waterline, hands creating a secondary splash zone that afflicts no one in particular, as they are totally alone.
Roza from thereon has two options. One, engage him in quote unquote combat. This is mostly a lot of twisting and tugging and squirming around, tactile and tough to hold as a cat resisting a bath. She tries that one first, a river of bubbles streaming from her mouth as her laughter is suppressed by the surge of water; she has to remind herself to clamp down. The second technique, and the one she tries next, involves locking onto him like a spider-monkey; in a sequence of very dramatic events occurring under the surface, she twists in, to face him, those long strong legs hitching around Elias's body. If she's going down, he's going with her. ]
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elias thinks about drowning. the quick, panicked thought rising in his chest and holding tight in his lungs as she spindles her legs around him. her body heat is a welcome one, warming skin to skin in the icy waters, but his thoughts lead him to the liminal space of endlessness around them. has he been drowned before? he doesn't know. it doesn't matter.
caught you.
but she caught him, and now they float in this mutually assured destruction face-to-face. he has seconds before his lungs start to burn. entwined and sinking toward an abyss, he is found and hooked by roza, hooked by the only person he will ever let impale him. tender in silence, he takes her face in both of his hands, fingers splaying through sleepy tendrils of hair. elias gazes into her until the fire behind his ribs becomes unbearable and he looks as though he might kiss her. he does, but on her forehead, like a secret he wants to keep for them.
the extraction is slower than their playfight, and he gives her a gentle push toward the surface first, though some urgency does bleed through when he can breathe again, chest heaving and begging for oxygen.]
I wasn't made for water– [he spits, the lake is caught in his throat.] I really wasn't.
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Correspondingly, the kiss feels ceremonial. Like a coda. She hovers in place for its reception, as swirls of underwater flora and fauna take note of their small and intimate ritual. Bearing witness. Roza likes it: someone should know, even though it's just for them. But fish will not tell any stories except to each other. ]
I don't think I was, either. [ It's said like a rough-throated confession, the normal sweet soprano of her voice made husky by lack of air and all that water. ] But for some reason, I do it anyway.
[ Her breathing begins to moderate itself, albeit only slightly. Roza hauls herself backward onto the dryish dock, slats of sunwarmed wood a welcome balm against all the bare skin scattered with light-catching droplets, body encased in a blanket of glimmering wet. Her underwear has correspondingly taken on a transparency, and rolls further beads down her ribcage and thighs. It feels good, Roza thinks, still smiling, open-mouthed. Tongue touching the back of her teeth (and there's glitter there, too, in the form of her piercing). She stretches out on her back, black-painted toes scrunching against the chill. Her dark head is tipping sidelong toward Elias, so that she can watch him. ]
Did I win, or did you win?
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[is he reacting to her, or is she reacting to him? in the expanse of water reflecting sky and sun and their shadows rippling, reaching away from their bodies, he can't know. likely never will. he treads in place, watching roza climb onto the dock and sprawl, catlike in lazy pleasure. he doesn't know what animal she'd be, but she picked his so easily, connections second nature (maybe first) in her universal mind.]
Why are you asking me? I won.
[obviously. he's decided he's more salt water than fresh; rough edges and ready to bite. elias stays in the lake a little while longer despite his initial rejection of it, eventually following suit in dragging himself out. wet fabric clings to his skin, heavy droplets trailing down his body and soaking the wood as he surveys the beach, one full turnaround from their cars to the black sands and the water lapping its edges, to the sky and finally roza. he's blocking out the light, his shadow becoming hers. he will always do this– a check, too many nights alone spent waiting for danger. laying down beside her with one arm bent behind his head, he tips his chin in her direction, brows raised.]
How long are we staying out here?
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[ Side by side, inches apart, she can feel the heat from his body, surging upward, as hers is, in an attempt to combat the chilly lingering effects from the lake water. When allowed to exist naturally, this is what a living thing does, balancing its internal workings against the weight of its environment. As with the word freedom, naturally carries with it a lacework of scarring also better thought of as internal. She watches the color of his eyes. The person he is now is many years divorced from the boy who would not look her directly in her own, but the eyes are the same, in shade, in clarity. He's tough, now. Tougher than the little girl from the bad side of Nome Borough. Built a shell strong as the bruiser trucks that come through the auto shops. People are afraid of him now.
What did the girl in that movie say? When you grow up, your heart dies. Roza suspects that she is in some way never going to grow up; too much of her is eternally unhealed, still inside that white walled facility, still lying down on concrete with her head in another dimension, spirit seeking sweet oblivion. Looking at Elias, really looking with her little-girl heart, she thinks, you either. You're not allowed to grow up any more, either. Please don't get any tougher.
She doesn't say those things. She leans in quick and startling and kisses his cheek, the surprising cousin to his chastely ceremonial forehead kiss witnessed by waves and fishes. ]
You pick. Since you won. [ This is paired with a playful eyeroll, as though she were indulging him. ] We can see the sunset anyplace.
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[a leg bumps him, so naturally he has to bump back in his own way, the back of his hand grazing her shoulder in a languid motion while his mouth forms a crooked smile. open spaces make him nervous, but that's the trauma talking. years in small rooms make someone want to be the biggest predator, the thing in the corner everyone worries about, only there aren't any corners on the beach.]
This is cool, [maybe his inner child hears her pleading and she makes him go back in time, where his words seemed softer and existed without certainty. so many of his nervous tics bled out, replaced with angry glances and cheeks ground between teeth. he catches himself tapping again, fingers playing piano on his skull. the kiss surprises him out of it, makes him look at her with feigned indignance.] are you trying the reverse psychology on me?
[the reverse psychology, like how people say the marijuanas or facebooks because he could talk a mile in kilos and he'd never need a map for the rest of his life and he can look at a building and know its skeleton, but sometimes he just doesn't know how to say things. that's probably why he did so bad in school – too many kids requiring too much patience – and the bullying didn't help.]
We can stay. [plus it means he can roll to his side, mirroring, propping himself up. he can catch their cars in his peripheral, over roza's head, but mostly he wants a better view of her body. mostly.] You want me to see the sunset here, right?
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Yeah! Yeah, please. Sometimes you can see the Auroras, too. [ Everybody knows about Roza's thing with the Northern Lights she calls to sit with her. Not like a crown; she is no princess, nobody's queen, eschews the confines of those words even in play. Wild things don't have titles. The lights come like a living thing, like a lover, like a spirit. She's excited by even the thought, a ghostly green catching in the sloe of her eyes. ]
As for reverse psychology, though... [ His occasional malapropisms always flow through her without commentary, and rarely correction; she understands what he means. In private, language is theirs to do what they will with, and Roza's verbal choices often take on a cast all their own, too. Instead she uses her peculiar witch grace to maneuver closer to Elias, hands and knees guiding the sinuous snake of her spine. Flat-palmed, she pushes him onto his back, fairly firm about it, and from there she leans over him, still not quite touching, hair not quite long enough to tickle his face. Not quite, or maybe not yet. It would be easy to make contact, but unfortunately the dead gods of their world did not have the foresight to keep Roza Zaripova from becoming a goddamn tease. ]
I'm more direct, you know that. I'm just gonna bribe you with beer and music. Except I don't have beer. [ The reason for her clambering becomes evident: she intends to roll onto her side on the opposite of him, where her phone is sitting in a pile of clothing. Boots, skirt, sweater, torn-up tights, and a Google Pixel with a battered Hello Kitty case on it, harboring all the tunes they could possibly want.
Will she make it? It depends on both her distractibility and Elias's good will. ]
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roza's magic is foreign sometimes, in the unexpected sense. things happen to him when things don't just happen to her. she was born into her abilities, where elias ignorantly decided the center pushed powers into his system to make him some kind of super soldier like in the comics.
he catches something there briefly when she touches him, back against the dock once again and mouth parting when memories and not-memories combine into something else he hasn't quite defined. he sees her reaching for her phone before it happens – blurry and quick – and the actions that follow. a fucked up deja vu.]
–Not beer, but you can bribe me with something else.
[she teases and he takes advantage of opportunities given to him. one strong arm wraps around her waist and squeezes her close, a mimicking of constrictor strength, a leg wrapping around her own. his other hand finds her face, bringing her further in. the kiss is heated– not a holy ceremony, but from someone who's loved and lost, savoring a lover's taste like a final goodbye.
every kiss is a goodbye for elias. he has water on his tongue, masking cigarettes and hints of sugar from the candies he keeps in his dashboard. his thumb grazes below her chin, pressing into her throat.]
Get your phone. [he murmurs, then smacks the curve of her ass. giddy up.]
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Incidentally, when she starts to disentangle, she drags her thigh right between his legs, slow and deliberate and just as incorrigible. ]
Don't you get me started. [ It's a complaint without real heat, because hers is an engine he knows intimately, easy for him to drive into a steady purr, libido like a Mercedes in a body she'd characterize as more of a Dodge Neon, tongue in cheek. Roza peels away lazily, kneeling amid her belongings, bare knees on scraped old wood. She watches Elias out of the corner of her eye even as her thumbs navigate the phone interface.
Jimi Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower comes winding and twirling its way out of the tiny phone speaker, and it has the same hypnotic effect all good music does on Roza: eyes lidding a fraction lower, narrow frame swaying minutely in place, a girl possessed. She sinks back down next to Elias, on her back once more, and one hand lifts to wave gently through the air, a secondary mimicry of how her body moved; it makes it way down her arm, through her chest, her stomach. Her hips. Dancing without dancing, the girl someplace else that's also very much here, as though the lake, and Elias, and Roza with it all occupy its own sliver of time. ]
C'mere, [ she says, ] c'mere.
[ To what end? None in particular. Only that she wants him to hold onto her, like the song might float her right up to those Auroras of which she speaks. ]
I kind of want to dance, 'cause I have all this energy. But I don't want to get up, either. What do you think?
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there are gaps in his memory, great big blocks of nothing cascading and pulling wool over his eyes. if roza has seen him during times he doesn't remember, he can't tell. she never treats him any different.]
Maybe I can think of something similar.
[he doesn't do dancing like roza unless you call going to a club and pushing through sweaty bodies for one shady deal 'dancing'. she dances how people on molly dance, like the music takes over them completely and the beat flows through their limbs to their soul. she has to keep moving, or else the world will stop. so he obeys, partially, adjusting to her needs, nudging one arm under her head to wrap around her, hand resting on her shoulder while the other glides up her thigh, her hip, her waist, fingertips tapping to the beat of jimi's guitar on her skin.]
What am I going to do with you?
[breathed out around a low chuckle, the gliding of his hand becomes a grip pressing into her soft curves, pulling her closer, as close as he can get her without being inside of her. his leg pushes between hers, thigh pressing against her wet underwear, and they taper on the edge of him ready to tumble on top of her and vice versa like this. his heart is thumping in his chest, and he can't remember the last time he had sex that wasn't just getting laid. roza isn't that, he's too attached for it to be so simple.]
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See, this is a kind of dancing. You're already getting warm.
[ It's in that complication that Roza really comes to life, water for the garden that is her excitement. She moves directly against his thigh so that he can see her eyes change, pupil swallowing the vestiges of near-black. Her breathing stutters, mouth opening by a millimeter.
Haven't they always been good at this?
When boys came and went, when her body was a cage she let anybody into in hopes they'd be the one to finally cut her out of it forever, when married women from Outside were calling well-deserved epithets down the phone line, when she came to terms with being nobody's dream girl, he made her feel a little bit good again. A lot good. She wants Elias to feel that way, too. To forget his own forgetting, living exclusively in the moment of sensory feedback loop, a long parade of nerves lighting their way. In the moments she wants to give him, there is no passenger. There is no past, no SLC, no police, no sirens, no courtrooms. Only her mouth and the color of his eyes and his hands, leaving marks whether the ordinary eye sees them or not: he may bruise her, he may not. But his fingerprints are there. Proof of existence, his mind, his independent will. Each element of realness half-responsibility, half-freedom. Half-curse, half-blessing.
Her willfulness is alive, too. Her hand hooks in the longer part of his hair, first gentle, and then enough to elicit a sweet sting, palm stretched wide, all fingers full (she learned this by having her own hair pulled by partners, pleasurably; you try for big amounts, not pieces). ]
Tell me some ideas, [ offered half-muffled, as in between sentences, her lips are patterning bitey little kisses across his throat, heading down to collarbones — she'll have to let go of his hair to go lower stil, ] I thought of a few things to do with you, out there in the Gates. The sky there, Elias. The sky with no artificial lights. Just you and the grizzly bear and the stars.
I think, [ here she does let go, ] it's the only place I've ever felt real. Except maybe right now.
[ Less talking transpires now, but she thinks he'll know what she means. She bites over his heart so that she can taste it beating on her psychic tongue, two pulses in time. ]
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Uh–
[he's bad at this– keeping his head somewhere else when he'd rather be talking about what's on his mind (her teeth, her voice, her body, the heat in below his stomach and the arousal between them). if the words were falling anywhere but roza's lips, honeyed over his skin and sending hitched pleasure up his spine, he'd be taking them with a grain of salt. they're genuine, and genuine is hard to come by.
he can't focus on a fantasy when he has her in his arms.]
Shit. I don't, [he really has to focus here. he's too distracted, too caught up in their entangled bodies.] god, I think about watching movies with you 'til we fall asleep.
[and the hum of the tv turns into static, and her head is in his lap and there's peace, at least he can pretend there's peace in dozy comfort, but he doesn't think about it for very long, and when he pinches her nipple gently between his thumb and index finger, he's bringing himself back to the moment.]
Can we table this?
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When Elias calls time, she's down to his second rib, one hand tracing lazy circles with the edges of her nails against his hipbone. She stops, and leans her cheek against his lower stomach, skin on skin, heat on heat. Those dark eyes regard him from under the soft span of her lashes. ]
Yeah, we can. But I don't know if you mean the part where I put my mouth on you, or the part where I fall asleep with you. [ Two modalities of thought not so easily managed concurrently, she'll admit. This sort of question she's asking is the kind of thing she used to let hurt her own feelings, rankling at the fragile self-esteem Roza built mostly on her sexual availability. But Elias is different, and she doesn't think he'd do her that way, not on purpose; she knows what part of the set-up here might be bothering him. ]
You wanna go in the back of my car and figure it out?
[ The big blue Jeep has four walls, navigable exits, and still allows for a view of the sky, which has begun its slow sweeping dark, brushstrokes of deep indigo painting the horizon. ]
For whichever one.
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he's reluctant to pull away, mouth slanting into something close to a frown. truthfully, he's relieved for the offer of a change of scenery. as much as roza can engulf him, he's on edge, and it's in the tension of his shoulders, the alert energy behind his eyes. muscles hint at relaxing and he brushes a strand of hair away from her face. thank you.
in mixed frustration – 90% sexual, 10% at himself – elias nods, then realizes that's not a proper answer.]
We can do both. I'll talk dirty or about what I wanna do with you, but not at the same time. Or I don't have to talk. Depends if you want me here, [and he grinds his hips into hers for emphasis, then presses a finger to her forehead.] or here.
[it's about what she wants here, really. he'll be in her head no matter what he does, and whether she'd sooner feel good with him or talk about movies is up to her. looking at roza, he doesn't know if he has to tell her how much he wants her– that part is written over his face and how he extricates himself from her, which is done very badly (the good kind of bad) and involves his hands roaming over her bare skin and the small of her back, teasing the waistline of her panties. again, reluctant to be without her, again, enjoying how he excites her.
he carries her clothes back for her, picks up the ones he'd left carelessly around his car and places them in the jeep.]
Kinda late for the towels, huh?
[they're both mostly dry, but they provide some extra padding, sort of, and his palms flatten over the tailgate to bring himself in to the back of the jeep, a smooth motion, one he's done many times. yes, this is better. the comment is about as haphazard as how he'd tossed his clothes and not meant to be answered, but he is a bit chilled, and if she doesn't crawl on top of him again he'll be reaching for his shirt.]
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The sun took good care of us.
[ The ensuing chill, the encroaching night, the cover of her Jeep roof, though — it makes Roza more aware of her body's fragility in a way she hadn't felt when out on the dock. It's that as much as her natural inclination to touch him that brings her closer, winding in. Like the tattoo, she's always either serpent or mongoose, and today the Queen Cobra's winning. Roza curls close, though not quite on, so she can press her chest against the length of his arm, her mouth to the set of his jaw. In the shade she's no less lively, however; if anything, her audacity redoubles itself, flowing through the tactile drift of her hands across Elias's collarbone, as though making mapwork of the places she kissed, bit, tasted. ]
Asking me if I want to fuck around is kind of like asking me if I want to pick the music, you know? [ Girl like a feral dog, always a half-step too hungry, girl with a line of something untoward all in her veins and eyes and hair, like the stardust from an alien world where other girls don't behave in the ways she does; promiscuous and psychic, playful where she ought to be serious. You're supposed to play it cooler than she does. ] I want it.
So we're gonna play a game. One hour, you decide. We watch something, you get head, I tell you one of my good tundra stories, I run back into the lake and come back with a fish in my teeth, [ speaking of unserious, ] you tell me what to do. Whatever it is. But after the hour, I get to be in charge. My turn.
You down?
[ The chances of imminent criminality here are not zero, should he agree. ]
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she winds around him again, slots into place smooth and warm and his large hand finds her thigh and drags her leg over his. he loves her legs, loves where they lead even more, likes how when she stands the shapes of her blends seamlessly together.]
Roza, you're talking to a guy. I'm never gonna say no to head, especially when you say it like that.
Yeah, I'm fucking down.
[and does watching her count as watching something? feral dog girl, meet wanton boy, hot and heavy heat returning in how he looks at her, half-lidded and voice low. the walls of the jeep did something, opened him up, carved a piece out and left it outside. he leaves little room for a response, pulling her fully on his lap easily, expert fingers unclasping her bra one-handed while he leans his face in close, bumping her nose with his and nipping her lower lip.]
Better take advantage of me while you can.
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Are you sure?
[ She transitions to a laid-back straddle, one hand skimming light over the beige roof of the ceiling, balancing the shape of Roza's body as she settles against him. The spread of her thighs means that her pelvis comes into contact with his, albeit through thin layers of clothing; there is again that blooming of black pupil, arousal writ large across her expression. Breath interrupted, heartbeat moving hard inside her ribcage.
Roza thinks there is still a little shyness in him, sometimes. He wants to know she's sure, too, and maybe to feel the new moon of her want making shadows from the insulated buildings that compose his grown-up strength. His has architecture. Four walls and a door. Exits. But she's good at that giving, at that limb-walking, and drawing control to her like she does her spirits. She's good for that. She just has to know she's doing it exactly the way that he likes, memorizing every telltale flicker of lash like a thing that lives off lust. ]
What iiif, [ the interruption here has more to do with the sting of his teeth, her torso curving in toward him as it goes bare, bra capsizing somewhere on the furred floor of the Jeep, ] mmn. Hang on.
[ If he wants biting, it's biting he will receive, her mouth slanting open to kiss Elias with a certain conquering grace, demanding, deliberate. The kind of kiss to steal a man's breath and make it her own, more specifically, sharp incisors catching here and there, unpredictable. Her head tips down in tandem with the roll of her hips, sending sparks and shockwaves flying through those open and receptive nerves. They tell her yes and again and more, so consequently the grinding adopts its own ruthless rhythm, even when she parts from him only by millimeters. A flush has made its way from collarbone to cheeks, mostly unseen but easy to feel. ]
What if we were in a plane crash? Orrrr... those aliens from Independence Day showed up? Or —
[ He's allowed to shut her up. It's his hour. The slow half-dry ride she's doing to wind him up has a double edge: her speech loses some of its radio-host clarity, tongue catching against the back of her teeth. She might unravel before he does. ]
— well, you know. Are you?
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I'm not hanging on– no, screw that.
[his hand latches to her hip, guiding her movements more confidently, pushing each grind down a little longer, a little harder. his cock aches beneath fabric, and she's on him just so that he can feel her folds parting over his covered length and he has to make an executive decision here-]
Oh my god–
[a harsh whisper, unclear whether he's exasperated from her teasing more questions or the steady roll of their hips is driving him crazy and pushing him in the right directions. probably the latter. he shoves two fingers in her mouth to press down on her tongue, her teeth digging into his skin, thumb pressed under her chin to catch her. he'd been caught before, now he's changing the narrative. the energy inside him switches, an 'off' to an 'on', and she said he could tell her what to do– who is he to deny an offer?]
–you need to something in your mouth, don't you? [elias levels with her here, makes her nod up and down, then back and forth. the pads of his fingers press harder.] Yes, no? Roza, [her name is dragged out when he grinds her down, sparking waves of needy pleasure.] I'm sure.
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