Like a refuge

Kiara

The place she takes him is surprisingly tranquil.

Surprisingly, because even at the height of October as fall settles comfortably over Colorado and turns the hillsides into a kaleidoscope of oranges and golds and brilliant, burning reds, it's still popular with the citizens of Denver looking for an escape from their daily lives that doesn't take hours and hours cramped inside a car to reach. Still thriving with camper vans and pitched tents and excitable children racing around the bike trails. The park itself was an impressive oasis pressed into existence around a body of water in Arapahoe County.

Surrounded by prairies and dotted with everything from cottontails to coyotes to white tailed deer, it was a strange compilation of man-made invasion and nature co-existing. Imported sand on the north-eastern side offered a swim beach near the parking facilities and entrance and long, twisting trails etched themselves into the landscape.

At any given moment, the tranquility was prone to interruption by bike, boat or even horseback. Still - the trail Kiara sets out on with Ian in tow leads them over several small hillsides and down further into a bracket of trees, they dip down past a well loved track and further on - the landscape devolves into knee-length grasses; prickling and wild where they sway in the breeze. It's beyond tall, imposing pines she hikes, they scatter on the other side and give over to large rocks; craggy plantlife struggling to protrude from gaps between and a tiny alcove cut into being down below a sharp cliffside.

Below, water laps at the sand and a perilous track with barely room for one foot has been worn into the earth.

The view is worthy of the hour long trek away from the main camping area, however. The mountains in the distance; the occasional boat anchored far out and the cries of the campers a muted, vague echo. Here, it feels far more like the natural world the park proclaimed itself and when they reach the lip of the rocks, the edge jutting out, the Verbena stops and holds a hand up to shield her eyes.

Peering down over the edge to what she'd shared was 'her spot'. "People don't camp out this far," she confirmed, uncapping a bottle of water and sipping from it. The afternoon was warm enough that Kiara's cheeks were pink with it; sweat collecting between her shoulder-blades where her pack sat, heavy on her back. "It's not connected up to anything but it's quieter." She cants her head at him. "Come on, I'll show you where I set up camp."

Ian

It's getting to be that time again. A new show, another run of rehearsals. Ian's schedule waxes and wanes like the moon, and this brief, welcome reprieve is likely the last chance he'll get for some real time off this month. It's clear he's glad for it when he shows up to meet Kiara at the park. When he steps out of his car he gives this long, luxuriating stretch and closes his eyes, turning his face up to the sky to absorb the light and the cool breeze.

He's dressed in dark green hiking pants and a white t-shirt layered with the same thin black hoodie she saw him in at Red Rocks. There's a small but expensive hiking pack in the trunk of his car, which he pulls out and slides over his shoulders before they begin the trek across the landscape.

The first sturdy tree they pass, he leaps up and snags a heavy branch, swinging around to hook his knees over it and pull himself into a seated position. Arionna accused him once of showing off this way, and maybe he is - a little. But mostly it just feels fucking good to be able to stretch his muscles in a natural setting. He doesn't stay up there long. There's a grin thrown down to Kiara, then he lifts up on his arms and jumps down. The weight of his bag thumps and rustles against his back when he lands.

They walk for a fair distance. Past the other visitors. Past a stretch of pines. Along the rocks to a small secluded beach. When Kiara takes out her water bottle, Ian mimics her, downing about half of his in a few deep gulps. A drop of it runs down his chin and he catches it with a swipe of his thumb.

"Quiet is nice. So's the beach." He tips his head toward it with a soft smile.

Come on, I'll show you where I set up camp.

He tucks the water bottle back into his bag. "Lead the way." There's an edge of something a little playful in his tone. Like they're about to go adventuring into some wild, unfamiliar landscape. "Did I ever tell you I went camping with Elijah once, during the winter?"

Kiara

[Doo de doo.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )

Kiara

It's getting to be that time again.

Kiara's own schedule, which has never been precisely normal, has been picking up of late too. More clients signing on to regular visits to find some semblance of comfort in alternative healing. The burden of life in a city being such that every so often - stress levels skyrocketed. No small part of the brunette wonders if there isn't a correlation to the fact the news is replaying details of fresh murders and disappearances.

That Samhain wasn't around the corner.

She's certainly felt it, in the air. In the press of the atmosphere around the city limits. Still - it was harder out here, surrounded by the crisper air and the chattering of songbirds in the trees to cling to it. The tendrils of unease that felt as if they had been clinging to Kiara's body like cobwebs. Harder to recall why she'd wanted to run so desperately the first time she'd heard that the Technocracy were close by.

She shoots him this tiny smile when he notes that the beach is nice, too. "Mm, nice and secluded."

The tiny track that leads down to the alcove is nothing more than a wedge of worn dirt; long weeds crowding over it; pebbles scattering as they progress along it and kick up whirls of dust. Somewhere high above them a lone hawk is circling, on the hunt for food for its young. The track tapers out after a point and Kiara moves over onto the boulders; her arms held out to her side to balance herself as she brings her body down into a crouch and turns to slide a leg down onto a lower perch, dropping down after a beat and dusting her hands off.

She moves aside for Ian to join her and hops down a second time easier, onto soft, giving sand. It unbalances her a little, the sudden give to the ground after miles of harder earth and she takes a minute to breathe; pushing her hair from her brow with the edge of a wrist. "You and Elijah, huh?" She offers, with a little breathless smile, waiting for him to reach her before gesturing off to the right where the tiny stretch of sand ended in a half formed cave; the rocks underside forming a small alcove.

It was, quite as Kiara had indicated, a quiet camping spot protected from both other people and the elements, should nature take offense to their plans for the evening. She curls her fingers into the straps of her pack and looks down at the sand as they meander along, watching her sneakers sink into the loosely packed earth. It was different to most found on a beach; not riddled with shells and debris; but packed finer. Transported here from some man made location.

The Verbena had elected to wear soft cotton shorts and a pale blue shirt; it was cut in a soft vee and left Kiara's arms mostly bare, as was typical for her when she visited nature, all but a sole necklace had been removed; her face devoid of its usual bold touches - it left her looking younger, somehow. Her dark hair curling and wild where it hit her shoulders.

"We went looking in caves around Red Rock together not that long ago, he and I. He's good like that," she half turns a look across at him, then turns to slowly trek ahead of him facing backwards; her expression lighter.

"So what did you get up to on this camping trip, together?"  Teasing, with the edge of her mouth curving up as if she absolutely had ideas of what they had, but wanted to hear him say it, nonetheless.

Ian

[are we slightly more graceful?]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )

Ian

Nice and secluded, she says, and Ian acknowledges that with a subtle grin as his gaze slides over the landscape. Kiara leads the way down the tiny trail, setting her feet carefully so as not to disrupt the loose earth. Her descent is slow and measured, and when she hops down onto the sand there is a moment where her balance wavers. Ian gives her time to get ahead of him, waiting patiently at the top of the cliff. When he's ready, he sets out onto the fragile track and makes his way down with quick, agile steps. When he gets to the place where the track runs out, he hops onto the nearest boulder, then jumps down into the sand.

He makes it look disarmingly easy.

"He's not a bad adventuring companion. I was a bit worried he'd be woefully unprepared, but he actually did alright. Granted, I was the one who set up camp." There's a little twist of a smile at that. But when Kiara asks in that oh-so-leading way what the two of them got up to on the snow-capped mountain, Ian feigns ignorance.

"Hiking, mostly. We went up a mountain trail in the Rockies. There was a lot of snow so it was slow going, but really beautiful. We talked about our families a bit." There's a pause as Ian crouches down to slide his fingers through the sand. When he stands up he adds, "Sadly not a very exciting story. Though we may have gotten a little handsy in the morning."

(They did. He remembers it.)

He trails a hand along Kiara's side, snagging the edge of her shirt gently between his fingers. "Race you to the cave."

He doesn't give her a chance to confirm or deny this request before he's off running across the sand.

Ian

[and running]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Kiara

[!! Catch him, Kiara.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

Kiara

She has an innate appreciation for the wilder aspects of life, Kiara, but her appreciation, while sincere, does not mean she has the same natural grace her companion does when it comes to leaping from heights and landing (like a feline) easily on the balls of his feet. The Verbena was a runner, but she was not a trained athlete, not quite the way Ian was. So when he takes off running toward the cave in the near distance, her reflexes, while not horrendously belated, are those of someone who cannot control her body quite as finely as he can.

He's off and she twists and calls something that's half snagged up by growing distance between them.

("Okay, Tarzan, you're on.")

She does put effort into it, that being said. He can hear her behind him; her steady breathing; the total focus of her energy as she manages to gain back some of the space between them. He's far enough ahead of her though, that he reaches the rockface first; that he can reach out and touch the rough surface; peer up and see the track they'd taken; the way the grass manages to find a way to grow; even pressed out so far between boulders; as if it were desperate to reach the lake's edge.

The cave itself isn't terribly deep; light penetrates far enough into it to highlight that it gets use as something of an occasional hideaway. Small boulders inside create a natural semi-circle around darker, damper sand. The air feels wetter; heady with recent rain.

When Kiara catches up to him; she curls her arms around him from behind and rises up on her toes to press her chin over a shoulder. "You only won because your legs are longer," she whispers, her voice still threaded through with exertion; her heart beating through the thin layer of her shirt. She smells like sunshine and the hike they'd just taken.

She doesn't comment on it, on what he'd mentioned of his trip out with Elijah until their breathing has evened out a little, until she can shrug off her pack and slowly rotate her shoulder where a cramp had begun to set in. "You're close to Elijah." It's not really a question, she knows he is, has seen the same concern reflected in his eyes when she's spoken of the danger the blonde so frequently finds himself in.

She drops her shoulder, rubs at it absently. "I never really asked. How you met him. Before I was even here."

Ian

The distance isn't far, but the sand and the weight of their backpacks (the way they throw off the runners' centers of gravity) make the race more difficult than it otherwise would have been. Even Ian is not as fast as he might have been unencumbered, but he pulls ahead quickly and remains in the lead, his shoes leaving long, shifting tracks in the sand.

When he gets to the cave he stops, sliding the pack off his shoulders. His breathing is deep, but far from winded. He can hear Kiara approaching behind him and waits with this soft, expectant smile curling the edges of his mouth. She comes up from behind to wrap her arms around him, and he turns his head to regard her through the edge of his peripheral vision, sliding his hands over her arms affectionately.

You only won because your legs are longer.

"That's one reason," he concedes, smiling. There is perhaps a whisper of gloating to it.

The flash of playful competition fades, and after a moment his breath relaxes. There's a feeling of absence when Kiara pulls her arms away. In the wake of it, he turns to regard her.

She wants to know how he met Elijah.

"We were in a club. Beta, I think. It wasn't much different from how I meet a lot of people." There are obvious implications to that, but he doesn't dwell on them. Doesn't feel the need to either apologize or revel in it. He is who he is. So is Elijah. So are they all.

"We didn't really talk, that time. Just went back to his place and..." he shrugs. "That was... a year and a half ago, I think. We used to hang out and sleep together, on and off. Now we just hang out." He pauses a moment before adding, "I try not to think too hard about his tendency to court perilous circumstances."

Kiara

There are obvious implications to it.

There's a brief, catching smile that surfaces on Kiara's face that reads she knows full well there were. She winds her hair up as he goes on, twists it out of her face into a knot and secures it there with an elastic. Her hands dropping to her sides as he offers the last and she studies his face for a moment, dark eyes ticking over his expression.

"Yeah. I try pretty hard not to as well."

A beat, her eyes drop away from his as if she's fully aware that of late, Elijah is not the only one who had been courting peril. "He was the first person I met here, you know." She reaches for her pack and carries it over a few feet, setting it carefully against one of the boulders and rising, rubbing a hand absently against her thigh. "I'm not sure if he'd even remember it, to be honest." She casts a look over a shoulder toward the cave, her smile returning when she finds his eyes again.

"I found this place not that long after. I come out here sometimes when I want to forget that anything exists beyond it." She settles down on the rock and unlaces one sneaker, toeing it off and then the other to burrow her feet into the fine granules; Kiara's toes are painted a bright pink; she makes a quiet noise of pleasure as the cool sand slides in around them, engulfing them.

"You're the first person I've brought out here." She tilts her chin back at that, levels him with this assessing little gleam in her eyes, hooking at the edge of her mouth. Affectionate and challenging and somehow every bit the same creature he'd met, so many months ago. The woman who'd been taping fliers to streetlights and taking up residence in his space at a café table as if she'd had every right.

Some things, apparently, didn't change.

"Do you like it?"

Ian

"I do." There's a sweep of his eyes over the shallow cavern, a longer, more considering gaze than he afforded it when he arrived. "It feels..." he pauses, searching for the right word. "Like a refuge."

The exertion of the run has left his body a little overheated, so he discards his over-shirt - pulling his arms through the sleeves one by one before tossing it gently onto one of the rocks. He paces toward the spot where Kiara sits, crouching down in front of her to slide his hands up over her feet. When he reaches the ankles he lingers there, tracing over the shape of bones and ligament.

"What happened to the two of you when you went into the Umbra?"

He's looking up at her with this quiet expression, dark eyes open and soft.

Kiara

He can see the way her expression changes, see the flicker of unease and agitation, the sudden realization she has that she's not easily going to escape answering the question. He has his hands on her ankles and the afternoon sun is glinting on the water and Kiara's silence is palpable.

She licks her lips and there's this little give to her shoulders, they curl inward a little as if some argument had finally been resolved and she were conceding defeat on a point. "I didn't want to tell you," she does look up, then. Meets his eyes and reaches over to trace her fingers over his jaw for a moment. Lets the sensation ground her before they drop away and she sets her hands beside her, framing her body on the small boulder.

"What I said happened, that was the truth, but - we had a choice to make. Whether to go on or come home. Going on meant facing a dragon. We put it to a vote. Elijah said - " Kiara's tone changes, becomes almost regretful. "He was willing to find another way but I knew if we didn't try. There was every chance others would and they might succeed."

She sits forward, searching his expression. "All that power, Ian. In the wrong hands? How could we have risked letting that happen? So I voted yes. And we found the cave and the dragon guarding the crown and we fought it. We had help, but - " She frowns hard, down at her hands. "At the very end, when the dragon realized it was dying, it went after Leah and Henry and I, we stayed behind. Tried to lure it away but there was an avalanche and," her shoulders lift and she breathes out.

"We all got buried. Elijah managed to get out first but," she manages a tight smile, laced with remembered uncertainty. A trickle of echoing fear. "It was close."

 Ian

I didn't want to tell you.

His jaw flexes when she says that, nostrils widening on the inhale. When Kiara touches him, she can feel the subtle tension under his skin. She goes on to tell the story - the whole story this time - and as she talks Ian's hands slide slowly from her ankles and drift over the sand.

It both is and is not what he expected.

He doesn't interrupt her. Keeps his attention focused and (for what it's worth) calm - though there are some small indications of emotion. The muscles around his eyes shift; widen; go tense. Finally he sits back and drops his gaze, curling his fingers into the sand.

"I thought he would be the one..."

See, sometimes people surprise you.

He looks over at the water. Where the sun strikes it, the surface gives off this bright, burnished glow.

"Elijah told me you saw a dragon. He didn't tell me the rest." He doesn't say what he's thinking, but it's possible to get some sense of it in the way he frowns and looks down - gets this expression like he's putting something together in his head. For this very brief moment, he almost looks a little wounded. Almost. But it slides away like rain.

Finally he looks up again. Slowly, he uncurls from his position and sits up on his knees. His hands settle on her thighs. There's a bit of sand on him still, clinging tenaciously to his skin, but he's not thinking about that at the moment. His palms slide up to her hips, resting there as he leans into her space.

"You could have died. You all could have."

They nearly did.

He gives her waist a little tug, pulling her off the rock and down into the sand with him. Once there, he wraps her up in his arms and just... holds her. Like he's half afraid she might disappear if he doesn't hold on.

"I hate that I wasn't there. That you had to do that alone."

That she had to be there, buried and suffocating and thinking those might be her last moments alive. There's a little sound in his throat, soft and pained. Then he takes a slow, deep breath and pulls back just enough to look her in the eyes.

"Don't keep things from me."

It isn't a request - or, precisely, an admonishment.

Kiara

You could have died.

"We could." She echoes, agrees with him with little hesitation. There's no agitation in it, now. That seems to have gently unspooled in her, she just looks intent on him, on his face. Reading the play of emotions that surface with no small amount of regret contained in her dark eyes. For holding back what she did, for paying witness to the very reason why she attempted to.

Her mouth flexes and dips into a supple little expression of it. Of the memory and she's looking away, sharply off to the right when he puts his hands on her and curves into her space. That, more than anything, makes her react. Makes Kiara shudder a little and become this responsive, clinging weight as he pulls her forward off the rock and she wraps herself around him. Melts into the embrace and keeps him close as if she had been terrified confessing her truth would tear that from her, too.

She's petting him, when he makes that pained noise and draws back. Just - rubbing her fingers over his skin as if to somehow reinforce and make her amends through physical touch alone.

(I know, I'm here, it's fine.

I'm sorry.)

Meets her eyes and she gives him that much, now. Lets them connect and hold and he can see the fine shape of them this close. The long lashes that frame irises the perfectly darkest shade of the earth, the faintest smattering of freckles that dot her nose and finely dust her cheekbones; seen the clearest now she's beneath the sun.

"I don't know why I did, just that it felt worse, somehow. Making that choice and knowing that I might have been leaving you behind." She slides her hands up to cup his face, framing it with her thumbs and drawing slow, sensory circuits over the line of his jaw while her eyes search his. "I would have done whatever it took to get back here." She doesn't kiss him, but there's an indication she wants to. Be closer, peel away the layers between them.

It's there in the way she touches him, Kiara. With slow, lingering intent.

She sits back far enough to drift her hands down over his chest and let them rest there; lightly settled. "I did do whatever I could." This time, it had been enough. There's a weighted awareness to the way she says that last that speaks to a fear one day, one close call, it may not be. Still - the water is collecting tiny prisms of sunlight behind them, sparkling and shifting and Kiara is uncomfortably aware of all the places their hike has left her sweating; skin gritty with sand.

Her fingers dip to tug at the edge of his clothing and the smile she locates is brighter, edging toward flirtatious.

"Come swim with me."

Ian

It wasn't long ago they'd been running, smiling, teasing each other. Strange how things can turn that way. Now Ian's energy is still - contained - his mood heavy enough that the easy warmth is gone from his eyes. Kiara says she did everything she could to get back to him, and Ian looks at her with this slightly troubled expression, but he lets it go. Exhales and feels some of the building tension uncoil from his shoulders.

Kiara is still there. She has not disappeared.

She tugs the edge of his t-shirt, and he glances down before following her gaze to the water.

Come swim with me.

He smiles. It's slow to materialize, but genuine when it does.

"You just want to see me naked." (As if that were a difficult thing to achieve.) Slowly, he gets to his feet, giving her hand a tug to pull her up with him. He shrugs out of his shirt easily, but makes a point of leaving it on the rock so it doesn't get covered in sand. Next come his shoes and socks. The sand feels cool and grounding beneath his toes.

Kiara

"Nudity suits you." She offers back, with a neat little riposte as he pulls her to her feet.

She's not quite so methodical, the Verbena, when it comes to shedding her clothing. Ian makes a point to leave his shirt on the rock, Kiara wiggles out of her shorts and lets them drop into a pile at her feet in the sand. Her shirt goes much the same way and there isn't hesitation borne in her to contemplate whether or not she should leave some scant ideas of modesty in place - she gently unhooks her bra and unwinds her hair from its brief capture at the nape of her neck.

She does pause for a moment when she's finished the pagan, steps out of the neat circle of disguarded clothing and tilts her face back to drink in the afternoon sunshine on her bare skin. Stays like that, still, with her face upturned long enough for it to become something ritualized. Something deeper than simple enjoyment of the moment (though there's that, too). Her feet leave small grooves in the sand as it grows wetter where the lake's edge greets the beach and the brunette is there, on the shore, drinking in the sun and then just as suddenly -

She plunges into the lake and vanishes, surfacing a few feet away and pushing the heavy fall of wet hair from her eyes, blinking and treading water. It's not so deep that maintaining balance becomes a hazard, at least, not so close to the shore but the first contact is startling. It's mid-October and despite the pleasant warmth of the afternoon, the water is crisp, the surface dancing with ripples as Kiara moves her fingers across it.

The silver chain around her neck has wrapped itself closer to her skin; pressing into the hollow point of her throat; the concave dip of a collarbone. Her eyelashes are spiked with water as she lowers herself into the lake a little further, observing him from a distance with some vaguely coy little expression chasing itself across her face; glinting in her eyes.

Out here, surrounded by nature, much of Kiara seemed wilder in response. A little more predatory, a little sharper and refined. "Come here," she instructs when he joins her and swims out a little further, pushing out where she cannot touch the bottom so easily.

Ian

It doesn't take long for him to shed the rest of his clothes, but by then Kiara is already plunging into the lake. Ian glances over to watch her dive. The ripples left in her wake glitter where the sun catches them. It's a beautiful picture, really. The water, the light, the trees...

For a moment he stands there taking it in, etching the place into his memory like a photograph.

He doesn't dive in right away. Instead he walks to the edge of the sand and puts his hands behind his head, closing his eyes as he lets the sun bake into his skin. It isn't properly warm - not like summer. The breeze is crisp enough to make the fine hairs stand up on his arms when it brushes past.

Come here.

He drops his hands and looks at her, this wry little smile playing across his lips. Then he wades into the lake and makes this smooth dive backwards into the water, leaving waves and ripples in his wake.

He stays under for a long time. Certainly longer than he needs to. When he surfaces, he comes up behind her, pulling in a deep breath and brushing the hair back from his forehead with a quick swipe of his hand. When he blinks, water falls from his eyelashes.

The lake is cold. It makes his heart beat faster.

He doesn't ask if she thinks someone might come by. Doesn't even check to be sure.

Kiara

Someone could come by, is the thing.

They've picked a secluded little patch of the park but the water isn't so solitary that a boat couldn't drift past them; that a family might not stumble on their camping site during a nature hike; they aren't alone. Not by a long shot and yet - it feels as if they could be. Beneath the surface, there's a myriad of patterns around them, in the trees and in the earth and circling far above in the sky but somehow, diving into that cool water - it feels entirely theirs.

Quiet and contemplative and miles and miles from the possibility of danger.

Perspective, you see.

The danger was never really gone for any of them, certainly not for Awakened like them but they could perceive, for a scant few hours, that it was. That reality was nothing more aggressive than a bad case of sunburn if they stayed out too long and even that, in the fall air, seemed unlikely.

He surfaces behind her and she turns slowly to face him; feels the stirring motion of his legs as they move under the water.

Bridges the distance between them and loops her arms around his neck.

In the water, their bodies drawing together brings sudden, vital heat, it lashes where she presses close to him, the curves of her body fitting against the harder planes of his; like puzzle pieces. "Hi," she smiles, droplets of water sliding over her skin, beneath the surface, the water turns their bodies into shadowy reflections. The crystal around her neck presses against his skin like a sharp reminder when she draws in closer, close enough to feel the tickle of his eyelashes.

"I could stay out here forever, you know." She murmurs it like its a confession, the pagan. Offers it tangled up against him in the water. "Sometimes I really want to."

Ian

There are times when he doesn't talk much: alone together in his apartment, sprawled out or tangled up on his bed, listening to each other breath; sitting together on her couch while he runs strands of her hair through his fingers. Hi, Kiara says, and he smiles. Their bodies come together so easily in the water, angles and curves and that pressing shock of warmth. He wraps his arms around her back and anchors her against him, treading water gently with his legs.

Almost, he tries to kiss her. There's this little dip of his head toward her lips but then... he stops. Just breaths, his gaze darting from her lips to her eyes.

She says she could stay out there forever. They're so close that he can taste her skin in the air.

Then he does kiss her. Suddenly, at first - pressing in to claim her lips like he can't stand to have that last sliver of distance left open any longer. Then his mouth softens, lingers, tasting the warmth of her breath and the traces of lake water on her skin.

When he finally pulls away, it's only fractionally. "We might get bored, after a while." Though his tone sounds as though he doubts it, and there's this soft smile when he adds, "...A long while."

"It's beautiful."

(You're beautiful.)

He brushes his lips against her jaw. "So what do I get for winning?" (The race.)

Kiara

"Clearly, you've never experienced a pagan festival."

She murmurs this between kisses and adds, as an afterthought while he brushes his lips against her jaw, her face tilted back, fingers lightly scratching at the nape of his neck, "You could come to one, you know. Samhain is nearly here, we're gathering out in Morrison for it." She doesn't expand on who we is, but perhaps the implication is there, somewhere. Others like her. In belief, if not shared Tradition.

There's a breath of laughter, then, when he asks what he's won for beating her to the cave.

Her eyes are warm where they refocus on his face, the stroke of her fingers teasing where they slide down his neck, dipping beneath the surface to explore the broad expanse of his back, skin turned slippery, almost silken in the water. "Are you suggesting you deserve something for winning?"

She turns her face and captures his lips, a little rougher than he kissed her, it gentles though, after a moment. Draws in and she breathes out; curling back into the cradle of his body for a beat close enough that he can feel the wild beat of her heart, the way it races for the rapidly cooling water around them, for all the tiny places they're pressed together.

Her eyes open, dark and intent on him.

"I suppose that depends."

She looks up as a flurry of birds take flight above them out of a cluster of tall pines, arching and diving into the water in the distance, half hidden by the sun as it dips toward the horizon, casting the surface into shades of deep orange and red. A breeze ruffles across the surface of the water; rippling it and playing in the treetops, shivering the leaves and the prairie-grasses beyond.

Back the way they'd come. Lifts tiny slivers of sand and casts them further along, weaving slow patterns into the shore.

She touches the corner of his jaw, her smile a gentle, considering little curl. "What do you want?"

Ian

"I have, actually. I might not mind doing it again." He says this with a curling smile, his breath coming a little fast - either from the chill in the water or the proximity of their bodies. Her question - does he think he deserves something for winning? - makes that smile broaden into a sharp grin.

He doesn't answer. She kisses him again - harder than he kissed her - and his fingers press into her back, dragging over her skin beneath the surface of the water. They're floating a bit further from shore, drifting slowly while they cling to each other.

What does he want?

He doesn't answer right away. When he does, he raises his eyes to look at her. His lips are reddened from kissing (and from the cold.) Drops of water trace their way down his neck.

"I want to fuck you so hard we both come apart." He lets that hang for a moment, then (somewhat paradoxically,) he unwinds his arms from around her body and slips away from her grasp, turning to swim back to shore. The progress he makes is lazy at first - unless she tries to follow. Then he gives a few quick, powerful strokes until his feet touch ground. The water slides off his back in gleaming droplets, catching the evening light.

Kiara

She watches him after he offers his terms.

What he wants for besting her and that little smile warms a little, blooms into something bright and toothy. She stays further out for a few moments as he heads toward the shore, stretching her arms out and kicking back with her legs; she watches the way the sky above them is ripening, bruising into darker shades and it's only after she glimpses him reach the shore that she dips, dives under the water and vanishes.

Resurfaces a considerable distance closer and swims in with a lazy stroke until she can set her feet down and wades out of the water with rivulets sluicing down her skin, her hair a dark tangle where it pastes itself against the slope of her shoulders.

She's winding it over a shoulder and squeezing water out of it as she climbs the shore; sand clinging to the curve of her calves, her ankles. Smiling as she catches up to him and puts her hands on his hips, leaning up and brandishing her lips against his ear.

"In that case, come and claim your prize."

Her teeth graze the edge of the lobe, nip down on his shoulder and she draws away, sliding a hand provocatively across the span of his lower back before sauntering past.

If he wants her, apparently, he's going to have to come and collect her.

Ian

[Life 1, like we do]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 5, 9) ( success x 2 )

Ian

It is not necessarily a prudent suggestion, given their surroundings - the lack of real privacy, the sand, the lingering chill from the lake that is only slightly mitigated by the sun. But neither of them have been known for their prudence in this regard.

Ian's body gives this faint shiver as he leaves the lake, the wind drawing some of the wetness from his skin. Standing still is difficult - his muscles want to move. So he paces back to the cave and unzips his backpack, pulling a rolled grey towel out from the base of it. He uses it to dry off a bit, giving his hair a quick once-over as he paces back to the waterside. Kiara's just coming out of the lake, and he watches her - watches the way the water runs off her skin.  Lets his gaze slide down before returning to her eyes.

She closes the distance between them. Puts her hands on his hips and her lips against his ear and says come and claim your prize.

He doesn't chase her immediately. Instead he turns his head to watch her go. Then he walks after her slowly, leaning down to lay the (now slightly damp) towel over the ground. As though he means to lie on it. But - that is not what he does.

She's got a lead on him, but he closes it with a sudden sprint. When he catches her, his arms latch around her waist from behind and he half-leads, half-hauls her toward the wall of the cave. When they're close, he turns her around to face him, gives her this look that's wry and hungry all at once and lifts her off the ground.

The wall of the cave is hard and a little rough where it presses against Kiara's back. Ian gets his hands firmly under her thighs and slots their hips together so he's holding her there, her legs wrapped around his waist. There's a little gasp of breath before he kisses her - hard - his teeth leaving a bruise on her lip. He's already starting to feel less cold, the blood moving through his body at a spiking pulse.

Maybe she is too.

He doesn't wait, this time. Doesn't trail his mouth down to linger between her legs. He tastes her, breathes her in - opens up his senses until her heartbeat is thudding in his head. Then he just pushes in. Slow enough to give her time to adjust, the first few thrusts measured and restrained and... he moans against her neck. The way they fit together, Kiara can feel the way his muscles shiver with the effort it takes him not to just...

The next one is harder. And the next. His teeth find the juncture between her neck and shoulder and bite down.

Kiara

[Life 1, cuz!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 2, 7) ( success x 1 )

Kiara

[You know what, dice. Fine. But I'm going to extend just to spite you.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 3, 8) ( success x 1 )

Kiara

It's not prudent. It's not, in all honesty, particularly safe.

But then, safe has never particularly been Kiara's style. It really isn't his, either. He picks her up and half-hauls her toward the cave and she makes this low, sub-vocal noise in her throat when he does. An inarticulate sound of mingled surprise and pleasure and she's breathing in this quick little way that reads hunger and raw, aggressive desire and that - he can see in her dark eyes when he turns her (when she allows him to).

See the way she lets her hair shake back from her shoulders where its starting to dry out; gives him the vantage of her throat, bare except for that lone chain that sits low, the crystal pendant between her breasts.

(Over her heart).

He lifts her off the ground and she laughs, at that. This breathless little gasp of pleasure that turns low and guttural when he pushes into her body; her thighs tightening around his waist; little heels digging in where she crosses her ankles neatly and rolls her hips into the motion of him. This isn't delicate lovemaking, it's not polite and it's sure as hell not elegant.

It's her lower lip bruised and throbbing where he bites at it, it's her fingernails drawing angry lines down his back and a hand sliding up to grab at his scalp. It's her back arching against that cave wall and breathing in sharp, harsh little breaths before they're torn with the next thrust of his body against hers. It's Kiara's eyes drifting closed and her palms sliding, scratching, seeking until she can feel nothing but the scattered, wild thunder of their hearts; blood pulsing through her veins.

Opens her senses up to every tiny sight and sound of it.

The pleasure mixing with the smallest sting of pain where her back is pushed into the rock; when his teeth find the juncture of her shoulder and neck and sink in. One of her hands scrabbles behind her, reaches out and feels the surface of the rock behind her, grips at it and grips at him and utters this exclamation that is equal parts his name and some provocation, some invocation to a higher power.

To several of them, as a matter of fact.

They're both going to be bruised, Kiara's hand leaves the rock to twine around his neck and her mouth latches onto his pulse; the wild fluctuation of it beneath his skin; she can feel it. Sets her sharp little teeth over it and bites down in return.

Answering the challenge. Laying her own kind of claim and just - pants into the side of his neck in the wake of it; shivering and coming apart (as he'd wanted).

Ian

There are things he felt earlier but didn't say. The fear of losing her. All those irrational anxieties (she is a being independent of him - something he cannot control.) Anger - that she made that choice; that she didn't tell him until now. He didn't say them because there were other things he felt too. Relief, empathy, understanding. Their lives are complicated and dangerous. In the same situation, would he have made a different choice? He used to think he would.

He didn't say those things, but there is a thread of them in his body now. In the rough and unrestrained way he fucks her against the cave wall. Like he needs to be that close to her, needs to feel her coming apart (needs to come apart himself - as he said.) Maybe that isn't healthy. Maybe it is. People are complicated creatures.

He makes a sharper sound when she bites him, and she can feel the way it spikes his pulse (already beating heavy and wild.) Feel the way it almost makes him come when he digs his fingers into the meat of her thighs and gasps against her. The sound goes low, his face still pressed against her throat so that the vibration of it hums against her skin. He presses her harder against the rock-face to make sure her weight is stable (that she isn't going to fall) and lets go with one of his arms - pushes his hand between her legs and gives this long swipe of his tongue up the side of her neck.

No, it isn't elegant. But it is primal, and raw, and honest. He waits until he feels her clench around him, feels the muscles in her body tense and shudder and that...

That tips him over the edge. He should try not to be loud but for a moment he forgets that, just lets out this guttural shout and thrusts into her hard enough that it pushes her higher on the wall. He does it again a few more times, the muscles in his back rolling and shivering. Then, slowly... he starts to come down from it.

He's breathing like he just ran a fucking marathon. Beads of moisture drip from his forehead. (He's not cold anymore.)

Slowly, he drags his lips up to kiss her. As he does it, he pulls out and lets her lower her feet to the ground. For a moment he looks at her and just gives this soft, blissed-out little smile. There's a mark on his neck where she bit him. (There's one on hers too. It'll bruise if she doesn't heal it.)

He wants to say something. Can't think of how to say it.

"You look..."

(Like kind of a mess, but in a good way.)

"Beautiful." He kisses her again, then leans his head against hers and tries to catch his breath.

Kiara

There is something almost barbaric to it.

The way they couple up against the bare rockface clad in nothing but their skin; half wild with their hair still damp from the lake and their bodies covered in sand and sweat.

(There's something that calls very acutely in the Verbena about it).

There's something entirely alive about them both, in the aftermath too. In the fluttering pulse at the base of Kiara's neck, the dark strands of hair pasted to her brow; the bright flush of blood where it bloomed beneath her cheeks. She looks ... (like a wild thing, with her dark, tousled hair and bruised mouth) beautiful and she straightens when he lets her down, her own breathing ragged and uneven. Leans into him as he does her, seeking out her mouth again and she gives it to him; parts her lips and delivers him this open mouthed kiss. Runs the edge of her tongue over the seam of his lower lip and breathes into them (him).

"Liar."

She offers finally, her voice low and intimate, husked with exertion. Says it smilingly, her eyes bright and slides her hand over the slope of his neck, down to where his skin bares her mark. Her fingers find it and there's a momentary focus there; a darkening of the brunette's eyes where she presses down on that spot just a little.

Just enough for him to feel it. The sensitivity, the burgeoning bruise.

Her gaze finds his face and she lets her fingers pass regretfully onward, skim down over his chest; press in against the wild gallop of his heartbeat. Over his heaving abdomen. Leans in and presses her lips to that point on his neck as she steps past him, smelling like musk and sweat and the water (like something wild and untamed). And if she has inclinations toward healing that soon-to-be bruise on her neck, she doesn't reveal them just yet.

Her back bears marks from the rock, though (his does too, though they're in the shape and design of Kiara's fingernails).

She trails over to where her pack rests, half fallen on its side and extricates a towel, wrapping it around her midsection and settling back on top of one of the many boulders that littered the edge of the shore by the cave; combing her fingers through her hair and watching him with this tiny, private smile edging into the corner of her mouth.

(And they're both going to have to dive into the lake again, to get clean but right now the pagan seems unconcerned by it, the fact she's covered in the scent of him, of sex, of moments ago up against the cave wall)

"You feel different out here. Not in a bad way, but - " Kiara's eyes drift back to the cave. "More honest. Unrestrained. I feel that way too when I come out here. As if there's something that fits into place I can never find in the city." She draws a pattern in the sand with a toe, spirals and circuits.

Ian

There's pain mixed with the afterglow, the flush of sensitivity and receding pleasure on his skin. He notices it more now than he did earlier. (Perhaps a better word is differently.) The marks on his back sting a little where Kiara's fingernails broke the skin and the bruises on his neck are sore and tender. There's a momentary blossom of dull pain beneath Kiara's fingers when she presses against the bite, but Ian doesn't flinch away from it. Just glances at her arm and smiles a little. He touches his neck when her hand falls away, ghosting his fingers over the marks there.

"I don't lie to you."

She's probably more sore than he is, all things considered. They're both flushed and bruised. Flecks of sand cling to their feet and legs. Their hair is damp and wild. They look very much like two people who belong in the wilderness.

Ian's a little winded. His breath slows a little with each inhale, winding down in the passing moments. He grabs his own towel and drags it over next to the rock where Kiara sits. Before he settles down, he grazes his hand over her back, feeling gently the marks made by the rock (by him, indirectly.) Then he lowers his weight onto the towel and lies back, stretching out with his arms sprawled loosely above his head and one leg bent at the knee. There's a looseness to his body, the way he relaxes. Lets the sun bake down into his skin.

"I am different, I think. I miss it when I'm in the city too long." He lifts one of his hands and trails the back of his fingers over her wrist. "Did I hurt you?"

Silly question. He knows he did. But that isn't exactly what he means.

Kiara

I don't lie to you. It must twinge, just a little, hearing him say that. It must make her progress over to her bag slow just for a tiny moment. He won't see that catch of remorse where it dips into being around her mouth, in her eyes as they find some point over the water where the sun's rays hit it and cascade dappling light over the surface.

Just a fleeting moment because she knows he doesn't. But she doesn't know she wouldn't, if she had to.

(To protect him).

Still, she's smiling when he comes to settle beside her, when he sprawls out on the towel and touches the edge of her wrist, her pulse flutters there, still beating faster. Dips her chin and regards him when he asks if he hurt her and the smile fades a little, a thin shoulder lifts. Falls. "I didn't mind."

Which must translate to yes, but then she goes on, her hand twisting to catch his fingers and twine them together; to frame the disparity between them, observe the size difference. She has such delicate, long fingers the Verbena, it's disconcerting, somehow. "I liked it." There's this little smile that edges there, at the corner of her lip, still kiss swollen and red.

"I like feeling that close to you. Sometimes I think being in the city, in all that concrete and steel, it cages who we really are." She shifts down, holds her towel around her body and settles down with her back to the rock, knees folded up and fingers trailing through the sand, lifting handfuls of granules just to watch them sift through her fingers and form tiny dunes. "That's why I come out here. It's why I go to gatherings. To the Chantry. It feels like coming home."

She catches his eyes, lets her gaze drift unabashedly over his body where he lays like a sleepy cat in the warmth of the sun.

"That's where I saw Her, you know. Out in Morrison. Standing beside a bonfire just ... waiting for me. I put my fingers into the earth that night and I could feel," Kiara's brows draw together, she wears a particularly raw expression, for a heartbeat, her fingers lifting more sand, weighing it in her palm. "Everything.

I felt different, after that. Coming out here feels different." She traces a fingertip along his knuckle. "Being here with you does, too."

Ian

I didn't mind, she says, and he smiles in this way that makes his face go almost tender. His hand is larger than hers, the shape of it more masculine, but there's a similar elegance in the length and movement of his fingers. He'd told her, once upon a time, that when he was young he'd taken piano lessons (briefly.) It hadn't been his idea, but one can see, looking at his hands, why he might have been good at it if he'd cared enough to try.

I liked it.

The breadth of his smile edges a little wider at that.

It isn't precisely surprising, hearing Kiara talk like this. She is, after all, a Verbena. But it's the first time she's been candid enough to really share that part of herself with him; to talk about feeling caged in the city - about seeing her Goddess in a bonfire. Ian watches her quietly while she speaks, trying to imagine for a moment what she saw. What she felt.

This is another kind of intimacy.

"I think that who we are is complicated." He means to speak of human nature, but he might just as well be talking about any number of things. "I've thought about it a few times. Just... leaving everything. Going out into the wild and never coming back." He's quiet for a moment, turns his head to look at the sky. "When I Woke Up... I almost did. But I think I might die if I couldn't dance anymore. And I'd miss... people. All of the life that cities have."

His eyes find hers again, and his hand drifts to settle on one of her ankles. "What's it like for you? When you..." he has a hard time articulating it, see? Maybe doesn't quite know the right vocabulary. "When you meet that part of yourself?"

Kiara

She thinks often about sharing those details with him.

The way she communes with nature, feels it inside her body in a way that is, in many respects, the deepest form of intimacy she's known (and likely will). Thinks of sharing memories she has of her life before she Woke Up (though it seems far more like a rebirth, to Kiara, a total shedding of The Before). The time spent among a coven of women who, while welcoming enough, did not ever quite entirely approve of her.

Her bloodline was never quite pure enough for them and some darker, primal part of her had wondered at the irony of it, that for all their old, powerful ways, their blood had still spilled and hers had been spared. Its virility hadn't pardoned them from the Technocracy. She knows that he'd understand it, in a way. That darker aspect of her, that part that relished vengeance - that could deal in it, if it had need to. She wants to open up that part of herself, aches to do it but - it's difficult.

He can sense that much, in the complicated little expression she wears when she talks about it.

I think I might die if I couldn't dance anymore. "There's different ways to dance," she offers after a pause, shifting her weight and uncurling her legs, settling her body along the side of his and propping her head on a hand; allowing her arm to support her weight. The movement drags her towel higher around her torso; bares a not-so-modest sliver of her thigh but she wears it without the barest hint of shame.

Her body, the easy ownership the Verbena's always managed.

She's never showed a scrap of true hesitation on that front, sheds layers as if it's nothing to be feared, the revelation of bare skin (and they both knew there were far deeper layers to be gleaned than what nudity shared with the world, anyway). "It's like ... " she reaches over to set her hand on his stomach, just lets it rest there for a moment, feeling the way his body heat warms it.

"When we jumped out of that plane. That feeling when you're falling. Exhilarating, terrifying," her mouth curls a little, eyes gleaming before her lashes drop, half veiling them. "But the most alive you ever are. I feel Her sometimes. More now than I used to, she doesn't quite let me forget. There's no complacency." Her fingers skirt over his skin, trace the shape of his ribs.

"She's here, with me. She's my blood. She's every bruise." There's a beat, Kiara's eyes shift back to his face. She curls a little closer to him. "Do you feel it, when you dance?"

Ian

It's impossible for Ian not to notice (acutely) when he's being touched. The same way he can hear things sometimes that other people can't hear. Can smell the shifts in Kiara's body chemistry when he breathes her in. These experiences are sharper, more startlingly vivid. When he was young, he used to be terrified of loud noises. The first time he sneaked into a concert, he almost had to leave. It was like that the first time he had sex, too. Overwhelming. But people build up thresholds. He's used to noise now. Whether or not he likes it depends on the quality, and whether or not it's something he invited.

Kiara already knows this about him. That sometimes even these small, simple touches will make his body light up. She sets her hand on his stomach and the muscles beneath his skin flex in this subtly reactive way. It's always been a little too easy for them to get lost in that.

But he doesn't get lost in it just then, because he wants to hear what she's saying. So he exhales slowly and listens while she tells him that meeting her Avatar makes her feel more alive (the most alive she ever is.) And while she speaks he seems quietly enraptured for a moment, his dark eyes taking in the sight of her next to him.

Her hand moves, tracing his ribs, and he inhales deeply.

"I feel everything when I dance. More than just feel it, become it. That's what dancing is." He hesitates a moment. "When you're around me, do you ever think... that I'm not entirely human?"

It's an odd question to ask. Though perhaps not, given the setting and the things they're speaking of.

Kiara

It might be an odd question to ask but the Verbena laying at his side doesn't seem to consider it outlandish enough to recoil at, or raise an eyebrow about. Her fingers still for a beat when he does ask it, though. Her chin lifting, face canting up to capture the expression on his. Her dark eyes very focused, mouth bent into a frown of consideration.

"I think being human is a pretty relative thing. There are stories, legends of Verbena that can change themselves. Become different creatures. Does that make them less human? Maybe. I think - " She leans up, presses her mouth to his shoulder in a lingering, affectionate way. Murmurs against his skin. "You feel the wild in you like I do.

Maybe not the same way, but - I feel that in you. Under your skin." She draws back enough to reach a hand up and trace the edge of his jaw, caress it with this subtle, sensory motion. Her eyes searching his face as if to find the evidence of it, that feeling she speaks of. The anthem of the wild, playing under his skin, in the beat of his heart, the blood in his veins.

"Do you feel like you're not?"

Human. Kiara sets her hand over his heart, leaves it there like a unspoken anchor.

Ian

He doesn't really know what answer he was looking for. The one Kiara gives him is as honest as it can be. He turns his head into her hand when she touches his jaw - kisses her palm briefly before she pulls it away to find his heartbeat.

"I did that, once. Became something else." This is hard for him to talk about. The details are too wrapped up in other, darker things. When he mentions it, a little spiderweb of tension threads across his chest. "A tiger, when I Woke Up. It feels strange talking about it now. There was a while afterwards when I half-convinced myself it was a dream. But I know it wasn't."

"When I saw that woman. Sabine. She told me she thought I had shapechanger blood. I didn't say this on Ginger because I didn't think it mattered to anyone but me, but she's a shapeshifter too. A lion. The word she used was Bastet."

He goes dead quiet for a moment. Beneath Kiara's hand, his heartbeat goes a little erratic, beating fast and then suddenly slow. Off-sync. "I don't really fucking know how to react to that."

Kiara

He did that, once.

Became something else and that, of everything he says captures Kiara's attention. Has her shift her weight until she's half housed over him, her hand sliding over his chest, the towel wrapped around her body half sliding away. The crystal she wears drifts low and drags against his skin; it feels oddly warm, as if its holding some charge of the Verbena's body heat.

"What did it feel like?" She wants to know, asks it in a low murmur as if the very act of asking and his giving voice to it were somehow precious; to be offered and received with total solemnity and reverence. Her thigh settles between his and there's a careful way Kiara arranges herself over him; settles there so that he can feel her. The warm press of her body; the comfort it may offer.

The grounding force of it.

And then, because it's a heavy thing, that revelation. That he may not be wholly human, after all. Kiara's fingers trace over his skin. "It doesn't really matter what you are, you know. The place you come from, the blood you have in your veins. It doesn't mean you're doomed to become anything." There's a beat, Kiara's eyes search his, her mouth pulled into a frown. "It doesn't mean it owns you.

It's just a part of how you came to be here. There's no way to react to that in the right way. It's -" She breathes out, rests her chin against his chest. "- you don't owe them any allegiance because you happen to have their blood." She punctuates her words with another press of her mouth to his chest. "Whatever else this Sabine said.

Or showed you."

Ian

When Kiara shifts her weight, Ian moves to wrap his arm over her shoulders, keeping her tucked there against his body. Her necklace settles against his chest - this warm, subtle weight (the silver in the chain feels oddly alive when it touches him.) She asks what it felt like to be a tiger, and for a long moment he doesn't seem to know how to answer (if he even can.) Slowly, he lets his hand drift further down the line of her body. When he reaches her hip - revealed as the towel falls away - he traces this lazy circle over the jutting shape of the bone beneath her skin.

The thing she says next - it makes him look at her with this complicated expression that softens into something almost vulnerable. (Like maybe she said the exact thing he needed to hear.) Then she goes on to say that he doesn't owe them (his supposed kin) any allegiance, and he can't help but hear Sabine's voice in his head:

We're dying.

He doesn't tell Kiara that, but maybe she'll see the way his eyes dip down, his gaze focusing inward. "I know I don't," he says, though his tone sounds less certain than he means it to. "I don't even know if it's true." He doesn't say what he's thinking (that he doesn't have anyone left who he can ask) but perhaps he doesn't need to. He props his head up on his free arm and looks down at Kiara, at the sight of her draped across his body. Her weight and the contact draws him back to the present moment - keeps him anchored there.

"It made things sharper. When I changed. The things I was feeling at the time. I stopped thinking and just... let instinct take over. It didn't feel like I was becoming something alien. I mean, it was new. All the sounds and the scents and the way things felt on my skin. But it fit. Like it was all just this natural extension of who and what I was in that moment."

There's a beat before he adds, in a softer, more ambivalent voice, "It felt powerful."

Kiara

She doesn't offer some of her thoughts in the moment. Less to hold back truths she believes he should hear and far more because she isn't any more sure of them than he is. If it's true, if he really did have the blood of something other. She feels the stroke of his fingers along her skin and for a moment - it feels like enough. To be right there, with him, with the sky slowly darkening above and the distant calls of the wilderness around them.

This place, the secluded little cove cut into the landscape, has meaning for the Verbena.

She's spilled her blood into the sand and reached her perceptions out, felt the flutter and pulse of the earth, the myriad of lifeforms that thrived here. It forges a connection, in the pagan's eyes. The places you give of your energy, your power.

It's not until he tilts his head down and looks at her that she lifts her chin; rubs her cheek against his skin and resettles, meeting his eyes and watching; absorbing the nuances of expression, in his eyes and his voice. When it softens, she sits up, draws herself into a half crawl and looms over him; her dark hair falling over one shoulder, leaving the the curve of her neck bared; the skin unblemished save for the mark he'd bitten into it. It stood out there, the hallmark of their passion.

The physical reminder of what it meant: being here, alive. In the moment.

"Sometimes I think about that. What it would feel like. To just ... " she settles on top of him, sliding her hands over his skin with reverence. "Let go. Give in to our instincts." She leans in to press her lips to the mark she'd left on his earlier. "Does it scare you?" Her eyes search his when she pulls back a little. "Knowing what she told you?"

Ian

Ian watches Kiara when she sits up, his eyes following her movement. There's something about the way the light hits her just then - the deep mahogany glow of the sun striking her hair - that makes him go still. There's a slip of a smile when she says she wonders what it would feel like to just let go - dreamy and soft as her hands slide over his skin. "I think we already have." The press of her lips elicits a little hum of pleasure, and for a moment perhaps he does let go - of the things he once was, of the things he suspects Sabine and others like her would want him to be.

Does it scare you?

His expression sobers at that. There's a hint of quiet sadness in his eyes when he looks at her. "Yes, but not for that reason." For a moment it seems as though he might not elaborate, but then he says, "I don't have any connection left to my family but memories and blood. I feel like one of those is getting taken away from me. And I can't even fucking ask them... "

(If it's true, then where did it come from?)

His gaze turns away, finding refuge for a moment in the trees. "Whatever the truth, it doesn't change who I am." There's a softer dip in his voice when he looks back. "Or where I want to be."

Kiara

There's a twinge of answering sadness around Kiara's mouth, this tiny hook that tugs at the corner and pulls it downward when he speaks of his family. A registering of empathy in her dark eyes where she watches him; the way his gaze sweeps away, toward the trees as if to find some sort of retreat in their long, sweeping branches. In the shiver that overwhelms their leaves as the breeze plays in across the water. "I don't think it does, either." She strokes her thumb across his skin, back and forth in an absent, tiny gesture of comfort.

Or where I want to be.

She manages a smile, then. Leans up (and in) and presses their mouths together in a way that is nothing like the raw hunger and savage meeting of their bodies earlier but somehow - just as intimate. Perhaps more for the way she cups his face in her hands and cradles it as if it were infinitely precious and vulnerable to shattering (as if he were). Breaks the embrace but stays close, her cheek against his, dark hair tickling his chest. She curls herself on top of him and around him and luxuriates in the physicality of it.

Is quiet, for a long stretch, as the sun slid out from behind a scattering of clouds and warmed their skin, Kiara's hair drying into thick, untamable waves around her shoulders. There's a certain energy that settles over the Verbena when her mind is occupied, a way her fingers move over his skin in an absent, abstract pattern. "There's something I've been meaning to tell you. I wasn't sure if I should. " She lifts her face where its settled, nestled against his shoulder. Fingers skimming over the shape of his ribs.

"Sera's back in the city. I saw her the other night. Something happened in Thailand. She can't be seen by anyone but us." A beat, Kiara's voice reflects regret: "Not even Dan. I know things are - " She makes some small, acknowledging sound. "Difficult, between you both right now. But I told her if she needed somewhere to go. Someone to talk to. She could come and see me. Stay at the apartment."

Ian

There's more he could say. Though words are a poor translator when it comes to things like love and grief. He broke down at Kalen's house earlier that month and never told him why, but he doesn't break down now. Maybe he doesn't want to. (Maybe he's afraid to.)

He closes his eyes when Kiara kisses him, surrendering to it (to her) for those few brief moments. There's a soft flutter of his eyelashes, the way they lower almost in surprise. He doesn't tell her that she's the first person to kiss him like that in a very long time.

For awhile afterwards, he stops thinking and just lets himself be. Like the trees and the lake and the stones. Like Kiara's heart, beating warm and steady against his chest.

(I am here to be here.)

Then Kiara speaks, and he glances down at her - at the way her fingers drift across his skin. When she says that she wasn't sure if she should tell him what she's about to say, a shadow of tension comes back into his eyes - this little crease where his brows start to draw together.

Oh.

He sits up off the towel, dislodging Kiara's weight carefully. He draws his knees up to his chest and drapes his arms across them. "Is she alright?"

No, of course she isn't.

He lifts one of his hands and rubs it across his neck, feeling the bruises there, the little marks where Kiara's teeth left their impressions. Something about the gesture feels both ritualistic and nervous. "Things were always difficult between us." He sighs a little. "But I don't want her to be alone. Or hurt."

Kiara

The last time they discussed Serafine, it was to gently pry loose layers of truth to one another. It's different, now. The information Kiara gives she does with some small degree of confession but it seems less anything she fears divulging and far more simply - an awareness of the potential it brings to somber the mood. To draw them back from that cocoon of warm, naked skin and the solitude offered by the trees around them.

The solace of each others arms.

She moves easily when he dislodges her, folding the edges of her towel around her body and tucking the corners in beneath her arms, her legs crossing beneath her as she settles there across from him, her fingers lightly running through the sand, drawing shallow grooves into the surface. "I think alright might be a relative thing for her right now," she offers softly and then lifts her face, her mouth drawn into a slight smile. She tousles her fingers back through her hair and shifts the heaviness of it back over a shoulder. It leaves the other bare, offers the elegant line of her neck, the dip of a collarbone.

The brunette's body was not built like the dancers Ian worked with. There was a lean sort of strength in her arms and thighs but it was coupled with an innate delicacy; a strange harmony of resilience and vulnerability - much like the woman herself. It was entirely too easy to look into Kiara's Woolfe's long lashed eyes and believe little else mattered beyond her coy little smiles and competitive airs. She wore her charisma with ease, the pagan, but there were always tells. Glimpses of the deeper facets she kept well hidden from many.

The turn of her eyes. The edging, subtle smile that teased a corner of her supple mouth.

It dips down, now. That mouth, her brows constricting a little. "She was pretty drunk. Not that I could blame her, it's got to be rough. Not being able to talk to Dan or any of them." A beat, Kiara folds her arms over her knees, rests her chin on top. "I told Dan we'd watch out for her." We, apparently, meant all of them. "I saw Elijah, too." There's a moment, Kiara presses her nose into her arm; breathes out slowly. "He said there's a Nephandus in the city. That thing we found in the park, it was the work of one."

She reaches her hand out, brushes his ankle. "There's a Euthanatos here tracking it down. Trying to contain the situation." Her voice betrays a touch of disbelief. "Whatever that means."

Ian

Kiara isn't wrong in that. The news does somber the mood. But that's the reality of their lives, isn't it?

She suggests that alright might be a relative thing for Sera, and Ian acknowledges that with a subtle tip of his head. In truth, if someone were to ask, he would have a hard time determining precisely what Sera's version of alright even was. He thinks about saying more, but there's this closed energy about him now - quiet and contained in a way that feels less peaceful and more... distant.

Sera was pretty drunk. Ian makes this expression as though to say: of course she was and for a flickering moment this little sliver of resentment manages to bubble to the surface. His eyes drift away from Kiara's when she says that next thing - that she'd told Dan they'd watch out for her.

He isn't angry. Not really. (Not at Kiara.) Ambivalent might be a better word.

"It's good she has you."

But then... his eyes snap back to regard Kiara, and there's a a sudden sharpening to his focus. He looks.. worried for a moment, before his chest gives this exhausted heave and he just exhales and closes his eyes. "At least someone's dealing with it."

When he opens his eyes, his expression softens. He reaches across to touch Kiara's knee, tracing a circular pattern over it. "If you need anything, tell me."

His skin is starting to feel colder now. The rapid-fire beat of his pulse has slowed, and they've been still and exposed for a while, but he doesn't try to warm up just yet. "Is that why you wanted to come here?"

Kiara

Her expression turns rueful, for a beat, this flutter of guilt and awareness settling over her features.

Casting her dark eyes down, away from his face. "I know it's not exactly heroic, to run away from things but sometimes it feels like all we do is fight. I spent months running from New York and I felt, like - " Kiara takes a breath, carves it out of her body and sits up straighter.

Her fingers slide over his wrist; tracing the lines of his palm; curling her fingers through his. "- I could never breathe. There was just never time enough." She offers softly, regret woven into her voice.

"Out here?"

She lifts her face and lets her eyes stray beyond him, toward the water and the sand and over the towering rock facade, the tiny pathway etched into the earth, the wilderness all around them. The twisting beauty of the trees with their stretching, leaf-strewn branches and the untamed, rolling prairies. "All of that just feels like some distant, hazy dream."

A beat, Kiara's eyes tick back to his, her mouth offering a crooked little cant of a smile. "Or a nightmare." The afternoon has worn on around them, the warmth of the sun evaporating behind the breeze that whips up; stirs through the treetops and scatters the Verbena's traced patterns in the sand. Sends granules of it skittering across their legs; embedding into Ian's towel.

The clouds closing ranks across the sky as if to remind the world it was October. She rises up on her knees, the brunette and shifts a little closer to him, sets her hands onto his shoulders and skates them over, down his arms with her eyes following the motion. "I suppose I'm selfish enough to just want to forget any of it is there, waiting for us to come back.

Just for a while." She slides her palms back up to his shoulders. "When I come here, I can breathe." She searches his eyes. "I wanted you to see it. To feel that, too."

Ian

[Life 2 - alright, that's enough being cold. diff 5 -1 (practiced) -1 (surpassed instrument - touch/sexuality)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Ian

Kiara's confession is far from surprising. Who among them hasn't felt that at some point? Ian lets his hand rest on her leg while she talks, keeping that small measure of contact, and Kiara meets it - takes his hand and curls their fingers together as though to stabilize them. There's something about the touch - or perhaps the confession - that closes whatever distance he'd begun to put between them. Reminds him, perhaps, that he is not (for the moment) alone.

Their hands drift apart, but only so that Kiara can rest her palms on his shoulders; slide her fingers down the length of his arms, over the firm curves of his biceps. When she does it his eyes drop to her lips. His skin beneath her palms is cool to the touch.

When I come here, I can breathe.

"Yeah," he agrees quietly. Knows exactly what she means. Then he bridges the distance and kisses her.

Something warm sparks between their tongues when he does it. Like he's kindling a fire. It travels down into his chest; spreads out across his body and over his skin like a wave. She'll feel it beneath her hands, the sudden glow of warmth.

When he pulls away, he isn't cold anymore.

"All of that... fucked up shit. It's real. But this is real too." There's this low, challenging sound in his throat. "They can't take every place and every moment like this from us."

He takes her hand then, squeezes it with his own as he stands. "Let's get cleaned up. We should set up camp before it's dark."

Kiara

She slides her hands over the span of his back when he bridges the distance to kiss her.

Traces the curve of his spine with her fingertips and presses in against him; towel coarse against his skin. Kiara curls her arms around his neck for a moment and allows the momentum to build; that spark to ignite and spread warmth through his system. His skin feels hot against her own and she chases his mouth, just for a second, when he draws back to remind her that this was real too.

That they couldn't take it all from them.

She stirs and breathes out against him, drops her lips to his shoulder briefly to press a gentle, lingering kiss there. "I know." She murmurs, and pulls away with some degree of reluctance as he climbs to his feet, tugging her up alongside him. In the interlude between their swim and discussion, the brunette's skin has dried, tacky and covered in the fine grit of the beach; her dark hair a wild tangle around her shoulders.

When she tracks a path down to the edge of the lake now, there's far less flirtation than perhaps there had been earlier. She wades back into the water until it reaches her waist, obscuring the dark lines of ink tattooed into the small of her back there. Twists her hair over a shoulder and scoops handfuls of water into her palms, letting it rinse away the traces of sand and sweat and sex from her skin.

It's rudimentary, at best. Brisk and almost comically brief the way she washes off the excesses of their earlier activities and dries herself off, again. The campsite she'd pointed out earlier in the shallow cave was warmer for the lack of reach the breeze had to penetrate beyond the scattered rocks inside it; forming a kind of barrier.

When she draws her clothing back on, the Verbena also drags out a sleeping bag and the makings of a tent. Neither belonged to her, a fact she points out with a smile, seated on top of one of the smaller boulders. Her fingers making quick work of the lacing holding the contents together. "The first time I came out here I barely brought anything. I think Neal is perpetually afraid I'm going to be eaten by something." She uncurls the tent; shaking it loose with a veiled little look at him.

The edge of a smile curling into the corner of Kiara's mouth. "I'll be seeing them, at Samhain. His wife." Something a little thoughtful creeping into her voice. "Their baby."

Ian

Ian's own cleansing process is less perfunctory than Kiara's. The water is cold but his blood is warm enough that the sharpness of it feels, if anything, invigorating. The things they spoke of... they're still rattling around in his mind. What happened to Sera. An as-yet unnamed Nephandus hiding somewhere in the city.

He lets the chill in the water chase them away. The act of it is purifying. The way he dives into the water and swims out, ducking under for a few long moments. Beneath the surface, he rolls back in a loose somersault and drags his fingers over the soft sand and silt on the lake's floor.

Eventually he comes back up. When he does he floats on his back for a while, gazing up at the sky. The evening light is dimming - dark blue and gold and shades of pink on the horizon.

He makes sure he's clean before he comes back in. When he walks up the beach, he runs a hand through his hair to slick it back from his eyes. Kiara's already there, redressed and opening up the tent. Ian collects his towel and shakes it out, using it to dry the last of the lake water from his skin. When he's done he drapes it over a rock.

"Out here? I think the worst you'll encounter is a pack of coyotes."

He finds his clothes where he left them earlier and starts to get dressed. Kiara mentions Samhain - seeing Neil and his family, and when she mentions the baby Ian glances at her. Doesn't say anything, at first. Just finishes zipping his pants up and leans over to pick his t-shirt off the rocks. "Is that something you think about much?"

(Kids. Family.)

Kiara

The tent Kiara's brought with them is simple enough to assemble; she's smoothing it out into the shape of one; squatting beside it and twisting the material so that the opening faces toward the sun. There's a small pile of poles waiting for assembly into the frame of it when she's done deciding on the positioning.

Is that something you think about much?

She's quiet for a moment in the wake of that; her fingers idly messing with one of the zips. "Maybe." She offers, her eyes on him as he moves to collect his clothing, tugs his pants up. Her focus there is brief, though. Her eyes leaving him to push to her feet and come around the other side of the tent. To begin snapping the poles together with dexterous, familiar motions.

"Maybe not. I don't know." She leans forward, sets two of the connected pieces down. The pendant around her neck gleams where it catches the lingering vestiges of the day, sending tiny glimmers of light dancing over the cave walls. When she straightens, he can see the complicated little expression on her face, the edge of uncertainty written there in the line of her mouth, the fleeting way she meets his eyes and then lets her own drop away, back to the tent.

"My track record with family isn't exactly wonderful." She knows his isn't either. For entirely different reasons, Kiara's eyes reflect that. The awareness of it, the lingering empathy for all he'd lost. "But if I had to name people I consider like family, they'd be at the top of the list."

She adds, after a pause. "I don't think I'm built for that." Children. Family. She thinks, briefly, of all that awaited them back in the city limits. "I don't think I'd want to be." Not with the world they lived in.

Ian

I don't think I'd want to be.

Ian's eyes dart away when she says that. The stillness in his posture feels like a confirmation. "I don't think I ever could. Bring another person into this world."

He slides his t-shirt on, pulling his arms through the sleeves. It's a simple act, but there's something heavy about it - like he's putting on armor. He crouches down next to the tent and picks up one of the folded poles, assembling it with a couple of quick snaps. Anyone looking in on them right then would think they were just like any other couple on a camping retreat. It's probably the most domestic thing they've ever done together - assembling this tent (building a home, however fleeting and transitory.)

"I wouldn't mind meeting them," he finally says, his voice quiet, eyes cast down to the agile movement of his hands as he fits a second pole together. "If they're important to you." At that, he lifts his gaze. "I meant what I said earlier." (About Samhain - going out with her to Morrison.)

He can't offer anything similar. Not really. He has no family - blood or chosen - to introduce her to. No Tradition to gather with. He doesn't celebrate the turning of the seasons in any such ritualized way (though perhaps it isn't fair to say so - he has always had his own rituals, personal as they may be.) Maybe there's a little awareness of that in his eyes when he looks at her. 

Kiara

There was something comforting to it.

The banality of it, the easy, mundane predictability. Assembling the tent as if they were nothing more than another young couple seeking a night away from the frenetic pace of city living. All said it really doesn't take much to lock the framework of the tent into place, there's a logic to it; sliding the cover over the poles; securing it to the ground; sliding the rain-cover over the top (though with their chosen spot, its an unnecessary precaution, the lip of the cave will provide all the protection from the elements they'll require). She'd canted this quiet, considering little look at him while they worked, after he says he wouldn't mind meeting them.

That he'd meant what he said about coming to her festivities.

Doesn't speak on it until they've finished with the tent, until the door is unzipped and Kiara's disappeared inside for a moment to stow her belongings inside. "I've never taken anyone out there, before." She settles on her knees, smoothing her palms over them, rubbing back and forth as if to return heat to her skin. "Lavinia, once." There's a tiny smile that flashes there, a flicker of humor in dark eyes as she unzips the entrance a little further down with absent consideration. "But that was mostly accidental. They'll read into it, you coming with me.

Everything is a sign with some of them." She pushes all that dark hair over a shoulder, settles down onto her side, bracing a hand there. The interior of the tent has a faintly damp, earthy scent. Old moisture and exposure to the elements never quite cleansed from the canvas. "But I'd like you to see." She offers her hand to draw him down beside her, eyes on his face, searching his expression intently.

"How we celebrate. What I believe in."

Ian

Once they get the tent set up, Ian tosses his bag inside. He's careful about how he enters - sits down at the entrance and takes a long moment to diligently brush the sand from his feet before he'll set them on the floor. He turns a little while he does this, angling his gaze over his shoulder to watch Kiara while she speaks.

They'll read into it, you coming with me.

His response to that is enigmatic - a soft lift of his brows and a thoughtful hum. When he's ready, he slips the rest of the way inside. Crouching on his knees, he slides a hand over the arch of the tent ceiling, feeling the thin fabric beneath the pads of his fingers. There's something exploring about it, like he's mapping out the space. His nose flares when he breathes in the scent of man-made fibers and old moisture. It's a familiar enough smell to him by now, but tents always carry something of their history with them.

Kiara reaches for his hand. Ian's eyes meet hers as she pulls him down beside her; says she'd like him to see what she believes in. He's quiet for a moment, then he leans in kisses the arc of her cheekbone. The gesture is intimate and affectionate, drawing his nose down to nuzzle beneath the corner of her jaw before he kisses her there too. "Then I'll come," he murmurs against her throat.

He draws away with some reluctance so he can unpack his sleeping bag. It's balled up tightly, and unfurls into something much larger and softer than one might expect at first glance. He leaves it open and unzipped, spreading it out along one side of the tent. When he's done he falls back onto it, reaching out to pull Kiara down with him.

They've only just gotten clean, but the moment he gets her close his mouth finds her skin again - kisses the side of her neck all slow and languid before trailing down to find the hollow where her pulse beats. His hand slides over her stomach, dislodging the hem of her shirt so his fingers trail over bare skin.

"What are they going to read into it, exactly?"

Kiara

It's going to rain at some point soon. October weather, even in Denver, made no promises of remaining dry.

There's a taste of it stirring in the air even as they settle inside the tent. It shakes through the old trees high above them and makes them creak and shudder; rattles what leaves remain on their branches and sends idle voyagers drifting down to touch the sand; to collect on the surface of the lake and slowly drift away. At different points of the night they'll hear distant noises, man made and calls from the wild, too. The rustle of deer and the twilight harmony of the chorus frogs, the low calls of the prairie dogs and the scamper of muskrats foraging by the water's edge.

A thriving ecosystem at work, with the patter of a late October shower.

Not yet, though.

Ian pulls Kiara down onto his sleeping bag and she goes easily, settling down on her back and resting her hands over her stomach, facing tilting just so to watch the way the shadows pull across his jaw. There's a small lamp the Verbena's brought inside but is yet to illuminate, instead she hums into the exploratory kisses he places against her skin and lifts a hand to stroke her fingertips lightly through the tiny hairs at the nape of his neck. It feels like another level of intimacy, inside the tent with its thin, pale light and the traces of past adventures lingering in the canvas, in the earthy aroma that clings to it. Being near the Verbena always delivered a certain sort of sense of it -

(Rejuvenating, pulsing life)

- but coupled with the where and when of them and Kiara's dark, gleaming eyes staring up at him, it feels potent. She feels more alive, more receptive the brush of his lips against her skin, her pulse beating erratically beneath his explorations. His fingers drag over her skin, under the hem of her shirt and her chin lifts a little, eyes traveling over the roof of the tent as she answers. "Mm, that you're the first person I've brought to a gathering to meet them. That it's the feast of the dead." She tilts her face, a subtle smile edging there as her fingers lift to stroke over his cheek.

"We come together and honor the end of the harvest. Those of us who have moved on. Spiritually," she adds softly, "it's the start of a new cycle. For us, it's not something we share lightly." She turns on her side, then, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders, his palm feeling the way her body shifts with the motion. She tucks a hand under her face and watches him with the lazy ease of a sleepy feline.

"I think they'll see what they see." She murmurs and leans in to press her mouth to his.

7:00 PM