[Emily Littleton] Somewhere in the exchange, Emily tucked a piece of cardboard with Enid's number into her back pocket. She thanked the younger girl with a smile that was felt again like their castles-in-clouds talk and less like the oddness that had overtaken the night.
The loose little group before the soup kitchen dispersed. Only Emily and Jarod were going away together. She stepped in beside him, finallly out of the rain. Emily had all but forgotten the rain in the absurdity of her conversation with Jarod. Now that it wasn't dripping down on her head in a constant stream, she felt the tendrils of curls sticking to the back of her neck, the dampness of her sweater. For a moment she was self-concious, feeling the tips of her ears flush but clamping down on the response before her cheeks pinked brightly.
"So..." she ventured lightly, weaving the cadence of her words into the pace of their footfalls. "What do you mean by Awakened?" It was a perfectly logical, innocent question. (If only she knew...)
[Jarod Nightingale] "Well..." he mused on this like a cat playing with a mouse. Slowly and torturously. "I suppose perhaps I could show you once we're alone." And for once, he wasn't trying to make some kind of sexual reference. "A city street isn't quite the right place for this sort of discussion. Promise it'll be worth the wait, though."
Well now, wasn't that a tempting thought? But he had meant the conversation would be worth the wait, right? In a very innocent, academic-minded sort of way. (As if Jarod could ever do anything without some kind of personal agenda. Innocent was a word that just couldn't touch him.)
And then they were at his car, which was parked on the side of the street, miraculously untouched. One would think that something this stunning and expensive would be picked over within seconds in a neighborhood like this one. The M3 shone metallic black in the street-lights, peppered with drops of rainwater on its otherwise pristine surface. Jarod fished the keys out of his coat pocket, and the alarm chirped pleasantly, doors unlocking and headlights flicking on and off. He opened the passenger side door for Emily, then went back to the trunk to open it and toss the umbrella inside. The car shook gently with a muffled thunk, and then he was back at her side, getting into the driver's seat and shutting the door.
The inside of the BMW smelled like new leather. It looked almost too clean. Like he'd just driven it off the lot earlier that evening.
[Emily Littleton] Emily felt mildly guilty as he held the door open for her. His car was immaculat and she was still marked with the dirt and grime of long day of volunteerism. Beyond that, her sweater was damp enough from the rain that she could feel her long-sleeve tee underneath wicking the rain away from it. But Jarod had two (very lovely) working eyes and could tell all that for himself. She rationalized that whatever it was he wanted to talk about was worth having someone re-detail his car.
Or at least she hoped it was.
She mumbled a quiet thank you as he closed the door for her.
After she buckled her seatbelt, Emily's right hand strayed back to her neckline and teased her locket out from under her layers. Alone in the cabin of the car, its thrum was more palpable.
Emily had gotten quiet for a moment. It was masked by the business of getting in the car, getting situated, heading off to somewhere new, but it took her a bit to acclimate to being alone with him. When she glanced over at him now, her eyes didn't hold the same sort of awe (but it was still there, an undercurrent). The gravity of some deeper motive was settling in.
"Do you think it's odd that we ran into each other two nights in a row?" she asked. Her tone of voice said idle smalltalk, but the fingers toying with her locket and the new complexity in her eyes said something else. (Why me? [Why now?]). For the past few weeks, Emily had been on the precipice of wrapping her head around something fantastic and new. Jarod might, or might not, fit into that. She wasn't sure.
[Jarod Nightingale] "Perhaps. Why, do you think it means I was fated to sweep you off your feet and welcome you into a world of mystery and intrigue?" His tone was teasing in an understated sort of way. Dry, with a subtle note of humor. One got the sense that very little would have surprised him. Admittedly, he looked a few years younger than his 29 years, but he didn't behave like the men that Emily was likely to meet at school. He wasn't a college student. He'd seen and done quite a bit, and was comfortable in his own skin. Maybe he could teach her something. Or at the least, show her something fascinating. And if that was part of the appeal, so much the better for him to ensnare her interest for an evening.
Emily was a bit of a mess compared to himself, perhaps, but it was not intolerable. Damp clothes and a bit of dirt were a price he was willing to pay, at the moment. He looked over at her briefly, and the gaze was a little softer than it had been earlier. More of a casual curiosity than a piercing stare. In any case, his eyes flickered back to the road and he turned the key in the ignition. The engine purred to life, and in the cabin... that was nearly exactly what it sounded like. A purr. It was quickly overshadowed by the music that resumed playing in the speakers. Portishead's first album. At the moment it was "Mysterons". The cool, trippy beats permeated the air, and he reached over to turn it down, but not off, so that it set a quiet backdrop to whatever conversation they may have along the drive.
Then he pulled away from the curb and took them back in the direction of the center of the city. Toward the towers of stone and glass and steel. Where people could forget that places like Cabrini Green even existed.
"Which school do you go to?" he asked idly as he drove.
[Emily Littleton] Beneath everything was the quiet hiss of tires on asphalt, a sound consumed by the shielding of layers of fiberglass and metal, carpeting and leather, regulated to a nearly imperceptible thrum. Layered over this was the purr of the engine, the flicker and beat of Mysterons, the steady splat of raindrops against the windscreen. Streetlights passed in an on-again-off-again strobe, intermittently casting them in shadows and bright relief. In moments like this, Emily could melt into her surroundings and almost cease being just a college kid, just a twenty-something, just... anything at all.
His gaze flicked over toward her while she was staring out the window, and for a moment he caught a softness in her features akin to wonder. It was mild, and fleeting, but for a split second she stood on the threshold of something ecstatic, caught in the confluence of tactile, visual, aural stimuli, in the obsurdity of the recent days, perhaps even in the alienation of being alone and free from familial encumbrances for a long weekend usually devoted to big kinship gatherings and largess.
Then that moment broke and she chuckled lightly, drawing her mouth into a smile that had more purpose, a more definite expression. "Sweep me off my feet?" she queried, looking over to him with a little less (peace) wonder in those eyes. (You're getting ahead of this story...)
"Northwestern," she replied, as the cityscape segued to something more structured, poised, proper. Something more Jarod and a little less slapdash. "I'm a third year in the engineering department," she offered, expecting the conversation to trend in that direction. The further they got from the soup kitchen, the more she seemed to relax and begin to take things as they came. After all, the decision had been made. She'd stepped into the car, and now she was committed to the ride.
[Jarod Nightingale] He took in her response thoughtfully, watching the road as he made a turn at a busy intersection. He seemed comfortable driving the car, so perhaps it wasn't as new as it looked. The ride was deceptively smooth and placid, considering the traffic.
"Engineering, hmm? Have to be smart to be an engineer. That's a good thing." And from the way he smiled, one would imagine that he meant it was good for himself, as well her. Intelligent people made for more interesting company. "What part of England did you live in?"
He hadn't offered any information about himself yet. Point in fact, she knew even less about him than she did about Adam Compton, who she'd met for all of a few minutes. Emily didn't know what Jarod had gotten his own degree in (if he'd even gotten one) or what he did to pay for this expensive car or his designer clothes. She didn't know he had a last name that was ironic for two reasons. What she did know was that he was beautiful, that he evidently went on dates with other men, and that he didn't like to be touched by homeless people. A somewhat sketchy definition, and not one that necessarily made him look good.
[Emily Littleton] "I try..." she said, side-stepping the remark about her intelligence with practiced ease. It was almost as if the (compliment) remark didn't register. Slid off her back like water.
Now and then the tail lights of the car in front of the lit up the speckles of rain on the windscreen. It was a fascinating play of color and shadow. Lovely, but completely unpredictable. Like the beautiful man beside her.
"Oh, just, here and there," she replied, shrugging her shoulders a bit. "No place terribly interesting." This probe did get to her, unsettled her a bit more than the others. She tried to side-step, but got caught up on emotions she wasn't quite ready to show. (Conflicted [and then, composed]). "How about you? Any particular place you call home?" she asked, shifting the query.
Her voice was tinged with far away places, again. Asking after home had brought out the accent more clearly, focused it, made it undeniable that she was skirting something. As much as Emily didn't know about Jarod, as much as she could even begin to guess about him, he didn't know terribly much about the girl riding shotgun in his car either.
[Jarod Nightingale] No, he didn't know very much. And that was part of the fun for him, judging by the way he oh-so-casually probed for information. Emily skirted past his question, countering it with one of her own, and Jarod's mouth curled into a smirk. Evidently, amused.
"Chicago, at the moment, but no... I wasn't born here." There was a beat of silence as the song changed, and Jarod pulled the car off the road and down into the underground parking lot of what had looked to be a tall, fancy apartment building. They were right on the outskirts of the magnificent mile now, and the building rose up to the sky in a towering monument of smooth beige stone and large windows, not all that unlike any number of other buildings that dotted Lakeshore Drive in this part of town. Jarod had to let the car idle for a moment as he slid the window down and leaned out to type in the code on the box that would open the way to the lot, and then they were moving forward again, and he pulled into one of the empty parking spaces and cut the engine.
Down here, there wasn't anything particularly special to look at. It was a parking garage, like any other... though the cars were mostly on the more expensive end of the spectrum. At this point, Jarod ought to have gotten out, but he didn't. Instead, he simply looked over at Emily and smiled. "And you haven't answered my question yet."
[Emily Littleton] If she had been younger, Emily might have squirmed under the weight of his direct attention. Men like Jarod were rare, so far from the norm in a single attribute (maybe more) that they became ethereal, untouchable, and in some ways it was not unlike having the full weight of God's attention bearing down on your miserable, mortal soul.
She took a shallow breath, held it a little longer than was entirely necessarily, and let it go. Emily's shoulders shrank almost imperceptibly. Her eyes closed, marrying her dark rows of eyelashes to each other for a moment, then flickered open again. Outside, Emily could see nothing but impenetrable walls of concrete and impossibly expensive automobiles slumbering satedly in their stalls. Inside, there was the nearly-opressive presence of His Loveliness. Out of all of this, she was the one piece that didn't quite fit.
"Brighton," she said, and her tone was one of submission. Yielding. Tipping her hand, but not entirely willingly. He could feel it, a mostly-obscured, bone-deep sadness clung to the names of these places when they weren't tossed out off-the-cuff and wryly. "Bristol. Coventry. Plymouth. London." The names tumbled off her tongue without much distinction.
Jarod, 1. Emily, 0.
Emily smiled, protectively, and shrugged a bit. "We stayed in those places the longest, but there were others. I have a map somewhere at home with all of them, but I don't remember right now." She wasn't lying. Jarod was, for the moment, getting the unvarnished truth out of this lost soul. But the walls were going back up, quickly and effortlessly, and she was shrugging off that sense of homelessness once again. "Like I said, here and there..." Lighter, almost jovial.
[Jarod Nightingale] Someone with a somewhat more gentle touch may have let the poor girl alone once they'd realized that the issue made her a little uncomfortable. But Jarod was both intensely curious and rather stubborn, as a person. He didn't like to be given the run-around, and one could imagine that he had an entire arsenal of tools to get people to open up to him. (Some more pleasant than others.) He looked at Emily as she wilted and provided him with the information he desired, and there was a soft curiosity in the gaze, as if he found her a rather interesting little science project.
But, contrary to popular opinion, Jarod Nightingale was not a complete asshole, so he nodded, finally, and added... "I apologize, if I... upset you. Seems like you don't really care to discuss it. I lived in London and Oxford for a few years, when I was in school, so I was curious."
And with that, he opened the door and stepped out of the car, swinging it shut behind him with a muffled thump. He'd wait until Emily had done likewise before hitting the button on the keychain that locked the doors and activated the alarm, then he fell into a relaxed stride toward the elevator that lay at the end of the garage. As they moved, they passed by a security guard who was sitting in a little glass booth and reading the Sun Times. He glanced up at the pair, recognized Jarod, and went back to what he was doing.
[Emily Littleton] A month or more ago, Emily would have been able to laugh it off. Even from someone like Jarod. But he couldn't have known that. A year ago, she would have been so deeply entrenched in her evasiveness that he would have gotten a haughty earful about minding his own business. Perhaps a slammed car door, and an Orphan stomping out before he could have welcomed her in. But Jarod couldn't have know that either. Unless he'd probed with more than words, he wouldn't necessarily realize that Emily sat at a tipping point of magnificent proportions and it was making her edgy in ways that were odd even to herself.
"Most people don't move around as much as I have," she offered, as a weak apology. "It sounds a lot more fascinating than it really is," she offered, expecting that he might know a bit of what that was like. Surely, under all of the gorgeousness, Jarod was a human being with his own struggles, strengths and saviors. What the world saw was only skin deep, and too easy to draw conclusions from. Emily was guilty of that, and she should have known better.
"I didn't mean to be snappish." A proper apology. "It's been a very... odd... night," she added, with a twist of her tone and a look in her eyes that said that odd wasn't necessarily a bad thing. She looked over at the security guard as they passed, and offered a little smile to the Nobody there. He was help, but he was working the night before Thanksgiving rather than home with his family in anticipation of a big meal and a few games. Even Enid had family to go home to.
[Jarod Nightingale] "You weren't being snappish. Trust me, I'd know." As they reached the elevator, he gave Emily a knowing little quirk of his eyebrow, smoothing over the moment of possible discomfort as if it were nothing of any concern. He put a key into the lock on the elevator panel and hit the button that opened the doors before making a gesture to indicate that she should go in before him. Once inside the elevator, he had to use his key again in order to gain access to the top floor, then the doors slid shut with a pleasant little ding and they were on their way up.
Jarod looked up and watched the number above the doors as it slowly ascended, giving a single twirl of his keys, absently, before clutching them in his hand once again. "Odd nights are rather commonplace for us, I'm afraid. But they aren't always bad. You'll get used to it." Or maybe she won't. Not everyone did. Then again, at the moment Emily was probably wondering what he'd even meant by referring to the two of them as us. "Anyway, I know what it's like. I've moved around a lot too."
The elevator stopped as the doors opened, welcoming them to the sight of an entryway, and the door to one of the building's two penthouse apartments. After waiting for Emily to step out onto the marble floor, he did likewise and unlocked the door for them, swinging it open and reaching in to flick on a light switch so that his guest could see where she was going in the unfamiliar terrain.
[Emily Littleton] The elevator key wasn't novel enough for Emily to pay it much mind, which might strike him as odd because she didn't carry herself like someone who'd lived in that sort of restricted-access seclusion. Maybe she'd lived in a rather bad neighborhood somewhere where security required more stringent measures.
The girl rested her hands on the elevator bar, leaning back into the wall a little and looking up at the numbers that were sequentially illuminated, marking their ascent. For a moment they were focused on the same thought, if only outwardly, and that gave them something in common for a brief some-time. Whether it elevated her to his near deific state, or brought him down to her humble level, Emily wasn't sure. She just knew that for a moment, their was a fleeting kinship. Then his keys flipped, tinked against each other, and were enveloped by his lovely fingers, and their relational sameness was gone.
(Tonight is a string of moments...) The doors parted, opening not onto a hallway but into a single residence. His front door was an elevator. That was halfway between fascinating and odd. (Like beads on a string...). For a moment, again, it was lost on her that he'd spoken of himself in the plural -- because it never occurred to her that "us" might include her -- as the lights came up and she begun to get her bearings.
Surreal. Jarod wavered in and out of accessibility in her mind. At one moment, she could almost touch him, and in the next he receded to some place above the clouds. Emily considered pinching herself to make sure this wasn't some elaborate machination of her own subconscious, but thought that might be considered rude, even by a God of her own mind's making.
Even as they crossed the threshhold, Emily was preparing to push her shoes off her feet with her toes. It was habit, and one he likely would recognize as quickly as her breathy Cantonese in the coffee shop the night before. "Should I take off my shoes?" she asked. That was quickly followed by an appropriately appreciative, "Your flat is almost as lovely as you are."
Pause.
(Aiya... I said that outloud.) Emily looked over to him and smiled, almost cheekily, to cover up that misstep.
[Jarod Nightingale] Emily had the right idea in taking her shoes off. Already she'd been given a handful of clues that might lead one to believe that, yes, this man was a bit of a neat freak. It wasn't that he couldn't handle dirt when it was of the right sort (was there a "right sort" or dirt?) and in its proper place: outside, in a natural setting. Clean dirt. Earth. Plants and mud and rain and all of those things that seemed so clearly not to belong in the middle of a city like Chicago, or to someone as urban and chic as Jarod outwardly appeared to be.
In any case, he liked things in here to be perfect. Footprints on his pristine hardwood floors did not fit that category. After closing and locking the door, he slid the coat off of his shoulders and hung it up inside of the closet that lay to the right. There was a mat just to the side of the closet door, in the corner, and here was where he slid his own shoes off, glancing over gratefully to note that Emily had begun to do this of her own accord, rather than needing to be asked. He nodded his approval, then walked past the kitchen and tossed his keys on the black granite island before heading into the living room. It was a large space. Open and well-lit and sparsely decorated with furniture of black leather and glass table-tops. A huge, rather expensive-looking oriental rug covered a portion of the floor, and the white walls contained a small scattering of asian silk paintings, some of which contained calligraphy, others of which depicted simple but beautiful landscapes.
Emily complimented him, and he turned to regard her with a small, gentle laugh. Perhaps not quite the reaction one hopes for in these circumstances, but it held no malice in it. "Thank you. It's larger than the one I had in New York, but... well, that's New York." There was a pause as he contemplated her somewhat bedraggled appearance, as well as his own nagging desire to wash off the (perhaps nonexistent) grime of the evening, and he glanced toward where the master bathroom presumably lay. "Do you want to get cleaned up at all? You look like you've had kind of a long day. To be honest, I was going to take a quick shower myself."
[Emily Littleton] She had expected Jarod's home (dwelling [sanctuary]) to seem as alien and remote as he did, and so Emily was surprised to find details scattered around the flat that felt like home. Leaving her sneakers and socks by the front door, Emily dropped her keys, cellphone and that bit of cardboard with Enid's phone number into the left shoe for safe keeping. As she moved into the space, she absent mindedly smoothed her hands down her thighs just a bit.
He had a kitchen. An honest to god kitchen with a full size fridge, ample cupboards, and counterspace that went on for miles. Emily could talk about kitchens the way that some guys her age talked about girls. If there was anything she begrudged her parents about her childhood for, it was the lack of a real kitchen in most of their near-homes and halfway-unpacked houses.
He may have noticed her appraisal of his culinary space, but Jarod almost undoubtedly noticed the way she moved. Emily walked on the balls of her feet, leaving only half footfalls behind when she was barefoot. Her heels only touched the ground when she was static, grounded for a moment and not moving between one place of another.
"New York..." she replied, knowingly. "Almost as bad as Tokyo!" When he looked at her like that, and mentioned cleaning up, Emily looked down at her bare toes, up to her dirty jeans, and then up to him again. "Yes, please. I'd like that," she replied. Out at the soup kitchen it was wholly acceptable to be grimy from working. Here, in his shrine to concinnity and cleanliness, Emily wanted nothing more than to straighten up her visage, tame the wayward curls, and be less of an eyesore in her beautiful surroundings. "And I'll take you up on that tea, if you're still offerring," she added with a smaller smile.
[Jarod Nightingale] "Oh, don't get me started on Tokyo," he answered with a gentle laugh that implied familiarity. "And I daresay I would be remiss as a host if I made an offer and then snatched it away, wouldn't I?" Something in his tone suggested a kind of playful formality. As if he was simultaneously trying to be charming and also mocking himself for it. For Jarod Nightingale, life was a performance, and sometimes it was a performance of a performance.
"Why don't you take the guest bathroom? There's clean towels and things in there, and I've got some women's clothes you could borrow in the closet, if you like." He led her down the hallway and into what appeared to be a large study. This would have been the second bedroom, had he required one, but since he didn't, there was a sofa in there instead, and a couple of desks, and numerous bookshelves. The floor in here was stained a beautiful, deep cherry red color, which went rather well with the black furniture. Two doors lay along one wall, and Jarod moved to open both of them, gesturing from one to the other. "Clothes are in there. Bathroom's there." And chances were, anything she might want or need could be found there. Jarod seemed like the type of person who probably had a lot of guests, and even though this was the smaller of the two bathrooms, it was still quite large and inviting.
The closet was a walk-in, and it contained a scattering of clothing items, some men's and some women's, in various different styles and sizes (all impeccably organized, of course.) Fancy dresses that looked like they cost as much as a cheap car hung in sealed plastic bags, and a shelf at the back contained an assortment of fancy shoes. Of course, for Emily's purposes, there was also a few pairs of jeans, t-shirts, sweaters and the like. More casual, though none of these looked like they were exactly...inexpensive.
"Anyway, take your time. I'll have the tea made for you when you come out. What kind would you like?" One might notice that he did not specify what types he had available, which probably meant that he had a fairly large collection.
[Emily Littleton] Emily had fallen through the looking glass and ended up in Jarod's apartment. She was sure of it. So sure that she would have been entirely unsurprised to find a full length mirror along some wall with her own terrified reflection pounding on the silvered side, desperately trying to call her back. Before her very eyes, he had melted from the pinnacle of icy anger into a charming -- one might even say warm -- host. They were trading the names of far away cities the way young boys traded sports cards, or marbles, in those hazy movies of yesteryear that made the fifties seem like an iconic, perfect decade. It was odd... but in a way that was almost comfortable.
She thanked him when he showed her to the bath, and offered her a change of clothes from his guest closet. Surely someone like Jarod, who had lived almost as many places as Emily herself, had friends from around the globe that dropped by and might need to freshen up. That seemed plausible enough for why he'd have an assortment of styles hidden away in guest closet. She selected a pair of jeans and a sweater, a classier cousin to the ensemble she'd been wearing earlier, and took a few minutes to freshen up. She didn't dawdle. Having a gaggle of roommates made one efficient with their toiletries.
When he'd asked her what sort of tea she would like, Emily had to think about it for a moment. Jarod had wrinkled his nose at the coffee shop selection, so she was fairly confident that he could brew up something that wasn't a travesty. Or summon a butler to do it. Maybe he had help here, squirreled away in large closets or hidden passageways, just waiting to pop out and brew the perfect pot.
"Jasmine," she finally decided. The aroma of a good jasmine green was positively heady, and had a magical way of loosening all the knots in her neck and shoulders. It was a good contemplative tea. An end of long, tiring day tea. A tentatively starting new frienships tea. Not as formal as Genmaicha. A little sweeter than Chrysanthemum. Not as smoky as Oolong, or as bold as anything darker. "It's one of my favorites," she added, offering something without being asked. Opening up for a moment, and not shutting down again immediately after.
Tea was a wonderful thing. Ritual. Shared experience. It had even made her smile, openly, in this strange place.
Emily took the time to get cleaned up, folded her soiled and damp clothes into a neat bundle, and then found her way out to the kitchen again. If Jarod was not already there, she would quietly seek out the kettle, fill it, and put it on the back burner. If he was already there... well then, chances are that much had been done already.
[Jarod Nightingale] "Woman after my own heart." Wait, he had one of those? There was an enigmatic sort of smile on his face as he left Emily to her own devices and headed back out into the kitchen. While she cleaned up, he heated some water and set about steeping two cups of Jasmine tea for the both of them. As the minutes ticked by on the timer, he leaned back against the counter and watched as the tightly rolled pearls began to unfurl in the water, releasing their delicate fragrance. When it was ready, he filled two large ceramic cups and disappeared into the master bathroom to take a shower.
He'd be gone by the time Emily reappeared, but she would find both cups of tea ready and waiting, with lids on the cups to keep the heat from escaping while they sat. The faint sound of running water permeated through the wall, but it shut off only a few minutes after he'd gone in. After all, one couldn't just leave a guest alone to twiddle their thumbs half the evening.
Eventually Jarod reappeared, wearing a pair of jeans. His hair was newly damp, and his pale skin had a slight flush from the hot water. There was no hint of self-consciousness at the familiarity of the situation, despite the fact that the two of them really didn't know each other at all, he behaved as if this was something he did all the time. Maybe it was. Maybe he was just comfortable with her. Regardless, Emily now had to contend with a shirtless version of this living work of art, who went into the kitchen and took the lid off of his cup of tea so that the steam curled up to his nose. He closed his eyes and breathed in, then picked up the cup carefully and took a sip, eying his guest as he did so.
"Well, I don't know about you, but I feel much better." And despite possible appearances, this really hadn't been some kind of ploy to walk around half-naked and damp. The shower had relaxed him noticeably. Then again, it was hard to pay that much attention to small details like how relaxed he was when there was this absolutely perfect carved-in-stone body being nicely highlighted by the kitchen lights. Jarod wasn't a body builder by any stretch of the imagination, but he was toned in that way that actors and models often were, with every muscle visible and not a trace of body fat.
And he had a rather fascinating tattoo on his right forearm, as well. The curling, twisting design ran down the length of it and ended on the back of his hand.
[Emily Littleton] Jarod, with all his catlike grace, is doubtless light enough on his feet that Emily doesn't, at first, hear him coming. She's leaning against the counter, with its edge in the small of her back, with her arms crossed lightly over her middle and her eyes shut. In the bright light of the kitchen, he can see the shadows her thick lashes cast on her pale cheeks, which are lightly pinked from the combination of cool night air and a warm shower. Her hair is only slightly damp, and it spreads out in loose curls over her shoulders and down her back. Her head is bowed, almost meditatively, as she listens to the hum of his refridgerator from across the room.
Some people felt that the kitchen was the heart of a home. Emily had opened no cupboard doors, pried into none of his secrets, but instead chosen to drink that (sacred) space in.
When he entered, her eyes flickered open and her gaze rested on him. She can't help that her eyes make a quick sweep of his immaculate form, but to her credit her eyes seek his soon thereafter. In the ambient half light of the coffee shop, and again in the dark outside of the soup kitchen, Emily's eyes had only looked "dark." Here, in the pristine near day-light of his kitchen, they are a deep and rich blue nuanced with the smallest granite-grey flecks.
His form is perfect, while hers is light and lithe enough. Her curves are subtle, and well obscured by the beautiful sweater and well cut blue jeans. She cleans up nicely, but more toward the girl next door end of the spectrum.
She had waited for him. Not until Jarod picked up his tea cup did Emily take fast her own. She went through the same motions, as precise as Jarod's own, of lifting the cup's lid, letting the heady aroma waft up to her nostrils, drinking in deeply the scents, and then taking a careful, delicate sip to taste. Emily smiled appreciatively. The tea had met her (uncompromising?) standards, and exceeded expectations. So few people could brew a proper cup these days.
"Yes," she agreed, noticeably relaxed herself. "Much better." Emily had no extreme loveliness to obscure how her edges had warmed and softened after a shower and the promise of a good cup of tea.
"You're... not what I expected," she ventured, still watching him (his features now). She seemed pleasantly surprise by this. Maybe she was getting comfortable around him, too.
[Jarod Nightingale] "Really? What were you expecting?" Despite the carefully guarded way in which he tried not to reveal his motivations and inner thoughts, sometimes little hints would slip out, like the way that the corner of his mouth twitched just now, as if he'd suppressed a smile. Perhaps he liked the idea of surprising her.
Of course he did.
In this light, Emily had blue eyes. Dark blue. Not the pale, crystalline blue that was more common. Jarod had dark blue eyes as well, which meant that they had a point of commonality here. His were a slightly different shade, however. They weren't stormy, like Emily's... they were more lustrous, with undertones that were almost purple when caught with the right light. Right now they looked like sapphires. They weren't near-black, as they should have been. As one might have expected, given his ethnic heritage. He was an oddity, genetically speaking.
Emily was content to stand in the kitchen, but Jarod eventually moved away from it, padding like a lazy cat into the living room, where he sat down on the sofa, being careful as he did this not to spill any of his tea. He took another drink from the hot cup, then placed it down carefully on the glass coffee table and leaned back into the crook of the arm rest, raising one foot up and placing it on the edge of the cushion so that he could wrap one hand around the bent knee. It was a casual pose. The cat, resting in its domain.
[Emily Littleton] Emily followed him to the living room, padding along behind him on the balls of her feet. She carried her tea cup with two hands, wrapped around the warm porcelain, with her fingers intertwined on the far side. Her nails were neatly trimmed and varnished with a slightly pink clear coat. She wore no rings or adornments other than the thin silver chain around her neck and the locket which was currently kept close to her skin, beneath the sweater and protected from view.
"Ambivalence," she replied, after a careful consideration of the applicable adjectives. Emily set her tea down long enough to fold herself into one of the armchairs, with her back against one arm rest, and facing him. She tucked her feet up under her, reclaimed her tea cup, and watched him intently as she spoke. "You seemed so... cold... at the kitchen," she went on, explaining the odd choice in words. Perhaps it was a mistake, but she spoke candidly and slowly, watching him over the rim of her tea cup all along. "Almost untouchable." Another brief pause, in which she looked away, and then back to him. "Transcendant."
The last word was spoken with no sense of awe of envy. It meant only that he was remote, aloof and removed from his surroundings. She didn't speak of transcendence as if it were enviable or elevated.
"But last night," her head tipped a bit to the side, shifting the waves of dark curls that puddled around her shoulders and spilled over the armrest of the chair. "You were vivid, immanent, even warm." Immanent was the enviable adjective here. Immersed in the present and aware of the world around him.
Emily's gaze fell back to her tea cup. She inhaled deeply, drawing the scent of flowers into the back of her throat, pulling it across her senses, trying to capture it for memory's sake or perhaps willing it to bring back echoes of another time. "I was surprised to find you have a resting point." Something less exalted, less exaggerated.
She shrugged a bit and looked back to him. "It's peaceful here." That was the surprise. To find sanctuary (in) around someone like Jarod. That was the surprise she'd been talking about all along.
[Jarod Nightingale] Emily spoke, and Jarod listened. For someone who by all rights should probably be rather self-absorbed, he was very observant of others. As if he found people genuinely fascinating. Puzzles to be slowly pieced together. She told him with a surprising amount of honesty what she had expected him to be like, and none of her descriptions were incorrect. He was all of these things. Had been all of these things. For all that they were seemingly oppositional.
He reached down to pick up his tea and mulled thoughtfully over what had been said as he breathed in the familiar and relaxing scent of jasmine. Another point of commonality. Jasmine tea felt like home to him. It echoed.
"Well," he finally responded, "perhaps the truth is somewhere in between?" And this was all the clarification Emily was going to get out of him, likely, unless she decided to probe for further details. A little enigmatic, but at least it was an honest answer, which was more than he gave to some. "I'm glad you think so." (This in regard to her observation of feeling peaceful.) "I prefer it that way."
(Need it that way.)
Jarod's eyes shifted down, moving from Emily's own eyes to the resonant piece of jewelry hanging about her neck. "Tell me about that." He indicated that he meant the family heirloom with a little nod of his head toward it.
[Emily Littleton] Her fingertips found the light chain, and teased the antique oval out from under the borrowed sweater. Her mouth tightened for a moment, pulling into a pensive moue, and then she shifted. Emily set her tea cup down on the table once more, and used both hands to carefully undo the clasp at the back of her neck.
She never took the necklace off with anyone else around. Emily never let anyone else touch it. (She'd broken a boy's finger for just that in Belfast many moons ago...) But for some reason, she felt compelled to let Jarod hold it. If only for a moment.
Deft fingers close the clasp again so the locket would not slide from of its chain and dribbled the necklace into the palm of one of her hands. She looked at it a little while before unfolding from the armchair and walking over to where she could hand it to him. She offered it to him, finger uncurled, palm upturned.
"It was my grandmother's," she said softly. They were, after all, talking about people who had passed on to the realm of Shades by now. The small ovoid was still in her palm, but pulsed faintly, nearly in time with her heartbeat. The air around it seemed hushed, calmer and restful. Much like the scent of Jasmine tea, this small heirloom felt like Home.
"It may have been her mother's before that. I don't know. When she died, I was quite young. We were in Seville, then, and my mother did not go home for the funeral." Perhaps by now, he had taken the small bit of silver into his own hands, found that the resonance was undeniably from the trinket and not the girl standing before him with strands of her hair falling gently across her face as she watched him. "When she did go home, she brought this back for me. She said my grandmother had left it to me, so that I wouldn't be homesick anymore."
Emily shrugged a little, and her now empty arms wrapped around her middle lightly, as if to comfort herself in the talisman's absence. "It's never opened," she added, in case he tried to force the closure. "It broke a long time ago. I haven't tried to have it mended."
[Jarod Nightingale] Jarod asked a question that he suspected was very personal, and so... the response that Emily gave him was surprising, to say the least. In this new environment, cleaned up and comfortable and... peaceful, as she'd said, there was more safety, perhaps. Or at least, the illusion of safety. She confided in him, taking off the necklace and placing it into his palm. Jarod set his tea back on the coffee table and examined the locket delicately. He was very careful about the way he handled it, as if he understood how precious it was. As if he was used to handling fragile things. The tip of one long, dexterous finger traced the shape of the small oval, noting the broken hinges. Emily herself had a great deal of untapped power lying within her, but her lack of experience meant that she left no particular mark. She had no resonance, as most mages did. As Jarod himself did.
But the locket resonated strongly of home. Or, rather, what one would imagine home to feel like. It didn't feel at all like his home had, once. It felt... warm. Stable. Comforting. Good things that didn't seem to really exist beyond stories. After a few moments, he handed the locket back to Emily.
"Hold onto this," he offered by way of advice. "People are going to try to trick you into letting them see it. Don't." A somewhat ironic observation, perhaps, seeing as how he could very well have been doing that himself. Still, he understood what it meant that she'd let him touch it, and maybe her observation of his being cold and aloof had gotten into his head, because he smiled then. It was a soft smile, and genuine. "Thank you, though. It must mean a lot to you."
[Emily Littleton] For Emily, Home was a thing more imagined than real. Home was the scent of Jasmine wafting up from a paper tea cup in the middle of a ten hour flight. Home was the sound of her father's voice as he talked on his cell phone in a foreign language, walking down the hallway to their hotel room. Home was also the angry red glare of the word "Canceled" stamped across monitors in airports all over the world, or words in impossibly foreign tongues whizzing by on street signs.
She carefully unfastened the clasp, slipped the chain around her neck and fumbled for a few moments trying to close it once again. Finally her hands dropped away from her neckline, this time without tucking it under the neckline of her sweater.
"So are you going to tell me now?" she asked, just as softly as he'd smiled. And if his brow furrowed or he started to question, she would add: "What it is you think I am." Besides Lost. Besides Alone.
[Jarod Nightingale] "You're like me," he said, though anyone looking in at them would likely think otherwise. "You see more. You understand more. You're capable of more. The world is a tapestry. It isn't concrete. The picture can be changed. Threads can be re-woven. And I'm sure... if no one has ever told you this before, then you're about to look at me as if I've gone completely mad." He chuckled softly, renewing his attentions to his tea as if they were chatting about something no more controversial than the recent bad weather.
"But at least I'm pretty, so perhaps madness is a forgivable fault." Beat. "Have you ever seen or done anything that you thought shouldn't be possible?"
[Emily Littleton] Emily did, in fact, look at him as if he was slightly off his elegantly appointed rocker. Her expression screwed up in a not entirely-unpleasant expression. One eyebrow up, mouth pursed in a bit, head tipped to one side. She reached up and dragged the fingers of one hand lightly through her hair, inadvertantly pulling some of those dark curls over her shoulder. The fingers of her other hand found purchase on her hip, tapped lightly against the fabric of her borrowed clothes.
Instead of returning to the armchair, or pulling up a corner of the couch, Emily started to pace thoughtfully. She still walked quietly (but not silently) on the balls of her feet, and without seeming to arrange it as so, she traveled precisely down one plank of his beautiful wood floor. Down a few steps, and then back. Like a pendulum, without wavering in the track she traced.
"Is this the Free Will vs. Predetermination question?" she asked, clearly having paid some attention in her collegiate courses. It also diverted the question from whether or not she had, personally, experienced any such thing. Emily dodged that academically, deftly, because the object of Jarod's question at once enraptured her and terrified her.
She stopped at the far end of her pacing pattern, with her back to him for a moment. Emily took stock of her own reactions. Her heart, for no perceptible reason, was pounding in her chest. (It's nothing.) In the same moment, she turned back to him, her expression calmer and more settled. "I'm an engineer," she said lightly. "Most of what I do every day seems impossible, but I gather you're not asking about that...." Her voice drifted off a little. "Are you?"
(He knows. [He does not know.] You're a freak! [It's nothing.] They'll turn you into a science experiment somewhere. [Everything... can... be... perfectly... rationalized.] He knows. [He can't.]) She watched him, waiting to hear which members of her inner council were right, and which were the paranoid crazies.
[Jarod Nightingale] All things considered, Emily's response to this outrageous suggestion was fairly reasonable. She considered it like a student: academically. Because it made the impossible easier to deal with if you broke it down pragmatically. Logically. Almost, Jarod laughed and said: you sound like a Hermetic. Almost, but he didn't. Instead he watched her pace and shook his head no when she asked for clarification. No, he wasn't talking about things that seemed impossible. He was talking about...
Magic.
"You still haven't answered my question." Well now, wasn't that a familiar accusation? He'd said the same thing, in exactly the same tone of voice, back in the car. "Answer honestly, and I can prove to you that I mean what I say." And ah, wasn't that a tempting thought? An impossibly beautiful man offering to show her something impossible. Or maybe it was more frightening than tempting, but Jarod was hoping that Emily was the sort of person whose innate curiosity exceeded her fear of the unknown.
[Emily Littleton] Mind like a diamond
Scatters light on long-dark thoughts
Awakened Child. Lost.
Her jaw set. Not angrily, but resolutely. Emily's hands found purchase on her hips, and those deeply blue eyes focused on him with alarming intent. Stormy as their coloring was, they were piercingly clear when she wanted them to be. (Deep rivers with no sea to run to.) He had accused her of dishonesty, which cut the young woman to the quick. Slowly, she lowered her heels to the ground, instinctively widened her stance. Emily was digging her heels in.
Still, her heartbeat would be nearly palpable to the life mage. The flight or fight instinct flushed her cheeks and washed her bloodstream with adrenaline. If she'd really had no idea what he was talking about, she'd have no reason to shift like this, transform before his eyes. She'd have no reason to act like she was cornered by his larger, more skilled felinesque presence.
"Are you asking about what is possible?" she asked. "Or what is probable?" Emily got a little pedantic with the life mage, feeling pressed into oddly open-ended corner here. There were a lot of non-zero probabilities that were possible, just highly unlikely. Perhaps, in her mind, Magic was one of them. "I can ..."
Here she faultered, having said too much without thinking through her sentences carefully enough. He'd trapped her, because she'd let the adrenaline overtake her common sense.
(Damnit. [Hundred and what IQ and you still can't keep your damned mouth shut?])
[Jarod Nightingale] Considering what he did for a living, Jarod was surprisingly intelligent and well-educated. Still, it was possible that Emily was even more intelligent than he was. Her mind was working now, attempting to justify the impossible. Attempting to render it into something safer and more easily explained. In a way, it wasn't an inappropriate way to look at things. Scientists knew well that impossibility existed only in the realm of the unexplained. Therefor nothing was truly impossible - there were only things that hadn't yet been figured out.
Jarod wasn't a scientist, though. He was primal. Primordial. He was life at its most basic. Instinct. Desire. If he reached out his senses now, he'd be able to feel Emily's pulse easily. He'd be able to feel much more than that. He hadn't attempted to do so, yet.
...until now.
And then it was like she was right there next to him, instead of standing across the room, and her blood and her breath were the same as his own. Slowly, he stood up and paced towards her, reaching up with one hand to tap out a rhythm on his chest that was exactly in tune with her heart beat. Then he stopped just in front of her and bent forward to whisper against her ear. "I can feel your pulse from across the room. I can tell if you're hurt or healthy or sick. I know if you're scared or angry or aroused. What can you do?"
It was almost like he was daring her.
[Emily Littleton] Emily was, categorically, brilliant. As such, she already perceived the world in a very different way than most of the people she encountered. Her mind was innately open to possibilities that seemed too wondrous to fathom. She could rationalize things that seemed incongruous with existence itself. This is why Awakening had seemed so gentle, at first. It was an extension of what she had always (hoped [known]) believed to be true.
Ba-dump, ba-dump. Jarod was intimately aware of her heartbeat, its delicate throb at her temple, the side of her neck. He could feel it as surely as his own. Slowly, he became aware of the soreness in her arms and lower back, muscles strained too hard at the soup kitchen. (She gives too freely of herself.) As his mind assimilated all these tiny details, Jarod suddenly knew with certainty that she walked on the balls of her feet due to a minor imperfection in her tendons (too short), that she'd severely sprained her right ankle a few years ago and it hadn't healed quite right, that she was starting to get the sniffles from two consecutive nights out in the cold. He could read her down to the bones, feel the scars from childhood illnesses (traveling too young to have an immunity to the world's ills). It all washed over him with a sense of certainty, as if he had lived it himself.
She was laid bare and built back up in his mind, cell by cell, hurt by hurt, strength and weakness laid out plainly without deception.
He could feel, too, how her pattern reacted when perception of intervening space fell away. When it seemed that their breath intermingled and the warmth from their bodies combined. He felt the way her breath caught in her chest, the way her spine elongated as she drew herself taller. These basic responses, visercal truths, she could not hide from Jarod's senses. Nor could she disguise the innate and equally visceral curiosity his words held, the deep longing for something deeper (more honest [more true]) that the simple, five-sensed world around them.
Emily was made for something more. Her mind, her body, her will. She was destined to be something far beyond the trappings of her mortal shroud. The reason Jarod terrified her was the same reason he excited her.
But how did you talk about these things, when you only had the mundane world as a reference point.
"I'm never lost... anymore." The words were soft, almost imperceptible, but as attuned as he was to her pattern in the moment, he could scarcely miss them. (I'm lost all the time.) "And I..." She swallowed, but her throat had gone dry. He was too close. So close that he made it hard to think clearly. "If I focus. I can ... see things like friction, or electricity. Or... feel... light."
Emily looked up at him, confused by how to share what she was trying to say. (Lost. [Found.]) "I know, somehow, where the weak points are. Without math... or instruments. I just... know somehow."
She shrugged a little. He could feel the tension in her shoulders from having carried boxes all day. He could feel the tightness in her chest from wanting him, from not wanting him to step away from her. It was a heady moment, for both of them. Intimate in more ways than one.
[Jarod Nightingale] There was nothing distinctly inhuman about Jarod. Nothing that someone could point to and say with certainty was an inhuman trait. But there were things about him that resonated very strongly of something... else. His avatar was always there, pacing and prowling. It lived in his muscles. It saw through his eyes. Maybe it was merely a piece of himself. Maybe they were mixed up with each other. It was hard to know the difference. He moved like an animal. He gazed like a predator. And when he smiled wide enough, you could see that his canines were sharper than was typical. Not in an obvious way, of course. You had to look closely. Little things like this added up, though, to someone who knew what they were looking at.
Emily spoke, challenged into admitting a truth she didn't even like to admit to herself. Dimly, Jarod remembered a similar confession, but he didn't like to think of that time because it made him remember things that he'd just as soon forget, so he pushed the thought out of his mind. Instead he listened to her describe the things she could sense , and though none of them matched his own gifts, he understood. Correspondence. Forces. Entropy.
And then there was... her. The physicality of her. The life. Her old wounds and imperfections. Her sore muscles and stressed immune system. It was hard to see all of this in his mind's eye and not feel just a little twinge of empathy. And, even... mild frustration. He wasn't strong enough to fix her tendons. Not yet. Soon, perhaps. He could heal a fresh wound but not a defect.
And anyway, there was also...
She didn't want him to move away. He had to be used to that. He was. But that didn't change his response. His nostrils flared slightly as he breathed, and when he leaned his head back, his eyes had a darker cast due to the dilation of pupils.
"Watch closely," he said, and lifted up his hand. He put his thumb between his teeth, underneath one of those sharper-than-average canines, and bit down. Hard. Hard enough that a drop of blood welled up at the place where he'd broken the skin. He held it out so that she could clearly see he'd injured himself. Then he focused his energy, brought the thumb back up to his mouth and... licked it.
And when he held his hand out again, the tiny wound had completely disappeared.
[Emily Littleton] Emily was through with words, for a moment. Through with putting extra sounds into the space between them and hoping it conveyed some intelligible meaning. Instead she watched as he bit down on his thumb. Her features contracted in sympathy when he drew his own blood. (Empathetic [Sympathetic]). He could feel her flinch at the imagined pinch, as if he'd bitten down on her thumb instead. (The problem with a beautiful mind is that you're never quite in control of where it might wander.)
When Jarod licked closed his wound and brought his hand down to where she could see it, Emily's gaze ran gently over the flesh made new. Slowly, with achingly gentle care, she reached out to run her fingertips over the newly closed wound. So gently that they were both painfully aware of the whorls and ridges of one another's fingerprints sliding past. She cradled his hand for a moment and then, still holding it, looked up toward him.
Her eyes sought his, and while there was wonder in those stormy orbs there was also acceptance. She didn't question what he had done, argue its plausibility, stand on imaginary principles. Most of all, Emily did not push him away or built walls of words between them. He'd shown her magic -- visceral, timeless, vulgar acts of creation -- and she was fascinated.
She also had the overwhelming desire to kiss him.
Instead, Emily gently curled her fingers around his. The corners of her mouth turned ever so slightly upward. She spoke one word into the scant space between them.
"Wonderful."
Oh yes. Emily Littleton believed in magic. She didn't quite know why, or how it worked just yet. She wasn't sure she cared. But it was (he was) genuinely made of stardust and full of wonders. She didn't even try to clear her head, to focus and make sense of it all. It was enough to simply be present, be awed, and believe.
[Jarod Nightingale] The thing about cats, is that they were patient. They could sit perfectly still in the shadows and wait all day for exactly the right moment to leap out and pounce on their intended prey. Since the moment Emily had gotten into his car, Jarod had not exhibited any particular outward signs of wanting to do anything more than simply talk with her. He could have done nothing more than that all night, if the conversation had been suitably intriguing (which this one certainly had been.)
But ultimately instinct took over, as it always did, for him. It was his nature. Emily's body invited him in, and he wanted to respond... so he did. Leaning in again, it seemed perhaps as if he might whisper something to her again, but instead his breath tickled at the ridges of her ear as he bent a little lower, lips finding the delicate skin just beneath the corner of her jaw and touching there with such softness that it almost couldn't be felt. Almost. (Unless, of course, she pulled away.)
[Emily Littleton] Unless of course...
As Jarod drew nearer, perhaps to whisper some other such secrets into her ear, Emily's gaze shifted downward. Her eyes closed, rows of dark lashes barely grazing one another as his warm (hot), humid breath caressed her ear, and his mouth sought secret (sacred), delicate places. She drew a shaky breath, unable or unwilling to meter and control this most basic (delight) response. Emily's head tipped away from him, granting him greater access, welcoming him further.
One hand came to rest lightly on his chest. Trailed slowly down toward his side. Timidly. Her eyes remained closed, and her breathing shallowed and uneven. Emily could not fathom pushing him away, not now. She couldn't begin to string the thoughts together that, in a rational place, with rational rules, would tell her this was a very (good) dangerous (intriguing) dance.
[Jarod Nightingale] Dangerous. Good things could be dangerous. The best things often were. Emily had come here tonight because she wanted to understand something that she'd been on the precipice of realizing about herself. It said something about her that she was here. That she hadn't turned and bolted at any number of possible opportunities, to escape this strange man who could heal wounds and feel the thrum of her heartbeat without needing to touch her.
I love how alive you are, he breathed against her neck, kissing again along her jaw, and then... his lips were so close to hers that it was almost maddening not to complete the distance. Emily's hand was on his chest. His skin felt warm and soft, and her fingers found the firm lines of abdominal muscles. They tightened almost imperceptibly beneath the tentative contact.
Two bodies stood very close, and the breath from slightly parted lips intermingled. Jasmine. I love how alive you are. I love how alive you make me feel. Maddening, that tiny distance. Her lips were so close. The warmth and softness of them. The shape that he could picture so clearly in his mind's eye, inviting him in. Seconds ticked by, and he held there... teasing them both, perhaps. (The thing about cats is that they're patient.)
And then the spell of tension broke, and the fraction of space between them disappeared as he let his lips graze along her own, and finally kissed her fully. The act was both gentle and intense, pulling her lower lip into his mouth and letting the edge of his tongue just barely play along it. One of his hands came up and settled at the side of Emily's neck, thumb tracing slowly up and down the curve of her throat.
[Emily Littleton] Emily had always believed there was something more. That they were something more. That the world she interacted with was bounded more by her ability to perceive and conceive it than by any other factors. She'd broken down those experiences through a scientific lens because it gave her structure, gave her purpose, but not because it was the only way to achieve those goals. Emily had always believed, but believing required a measure of faith in things unknowable.
Jarod simply was. He didn't believe in the infinite possibilities, the intricacies of Fate. He knew them, the way Emily knew that it was his mouth seeking hers, his skin beneath her fingernails and she gently dragged them down his side, his voice that curled into her ear in such pleasing sussurations. Tonight, curled against him in the immaculate sanctuary of his making, Emily was alive in ways she'd never known before and it thrummed in her pattern like wind rushing toward a wildfire.
Quiet but I'm sure there is something here...
In the seconds that passed, Emily could think of nothing but the nearness of his mouth, of the heat that passed between them heavy with tension and her timidity. She yielded as much to his gentleness as his intensity, which called to something deeper (caged) within her. Awakened had stirred more than Emily's latent abilities. Her fingers reached up, seeking the edges of his features, the feathery soft hairs that led into his perfect tresses, the curve of his ear, the lower edge of his jaw. Each touch was whisper-light. Seeking. (Imploring.)
Tell me everything 'cause I want to hear...
A shudder rippled through her as his fingers settled near her throat. He was too close to judge whether it was pleasure or some primordial fear (prey). Only then did her eyes flicker open and her gaze come to rest on him again, heady and clouded with their shared desires. In all of this, Emily offered up no small sounds other than the sound of her breath.
[Jarod Nightingale] For a predator, he had a surprisingly delicate touch. He handled Emily the same way he'd handled her locket, earlier. As if she were impossibly fragile, and he was afraid she might shatter. She wasn't fragile, of course, but the situation lent itself to that. He'd given her a hell of a lot to process in the last couple of minutes. Anyone would be feeling a little shaken.
If he were less selfish, he probably would have stopped here. Or, even better... not kissed Emily at all. He'd have simply sent her home with her mind full of new possibilities and let himself remain nothing more than the guy who told her she wasn't alone. (Because it was good to believe that, even if it was, ultimately, no more true for the Awakened than it was for ordinary people.) But Jarod was selfish. He was selfish because he was alone, and because he'd learned a very long time ago that the only person who would ever take care of him was himself. And right now... he wanted to do exactly what he was doing.
But for all that he could be capable of coldness (he was a wintery creature, and always had been), he was not... numb. Not even close. The pulse of creation flowed through him, and every single nerve ending was impossibly, deliciously sensitive. He sucked in a breath when Emily's nails dragged down his side, pulling the air out of her lungs and into his own. Then he made just the faintest sound in the back of his throat and bit down on her lower lip gently. She touched his hair, his face... she explored, and for a moment he let her do so, but then he broke the kiss and pulled back, and he smiled just a little.
He didn't say anything. Instead he began to walk slowly backwards down the hallway with one arm stretched out toward Emily, finger curling back in an unmistakable gesture of: follow me. This way. Come here.
[Emily Littleton] Perhaps it was selfish of Jarod to draw her in like this. Perhaps a gentler soul would have left her quietly to sort things out for herself. Or perhaps the gentler, kinder route was to envelope her in his own seeking, his quest for solace, satiety, someone to hold on to (if only for tonight). Maybe the crueler thing was really to leave her to her own devices, to the struggle of reconciling who she had been with who she was becoming.
When Jarod stepped away, her senses reeled. She felt the space between them draw out, enlongate, stretch like taffy until it was almost unbearable. And when she could no longer feel the millions of tiny attractions between two (too) close bodies (beings), then the apartment was chill, bereft of the nearness of him, and she felt the flush of her cheeks and lips burn in his absence.
Emily reached up and gathered her hair in her hands, twisting it deftly into a loose spiral and tucking that spiral in on itself so that it stayed, mostly, out of her face. She breathed in, drawing the lingering scent of Jasmine and him deep into center, and wordlessly followed him. One foot after another. Just as readily as she had followed him away from the soup kitchen, up into this tower of glass and chrome, up to the edge of disbelief, and then over into this place of wonder and earthbound gods.
Do you think it means I was fated to sweep you off your feet and welcome you into a world of mystery and intrigue?
His earlier words rang in her ears (One foot before the other.) and Emily could no more break away from following than she could turn her eyes away from that deftly crooked finger, that (inevitably) slightly upturned mouth. A few steps more and she could reach out, tangle her fingers with his, find (home) grounding in the warmth of his (wintery) touch. If only for a moment.
Follow me. (Anywhere.)
This way.
Come here.
If only for a moment, all of this might just seem to make sense.
[Jarod Nightingale] The bedroom door had been cracked open, and he had only to push against it to open the way. Inside the spacious room, a mixture of moonlight and the glow of the city shone in from three large windows. It was plenty of light to see by, so he left the main switch off and continued on to where the bed lay, stopping to stand next to it as Emily re-entered his space.
And then she was there again. She'd followed, as he'd known she would. As they always did, because this was a dance he'd practiced over and over and over again, and he knew all the steps by heart. But somehow each time it was different and new. And for a few hours, everything in the world fell away. (And he was alive. And he wasn't alone.)
His mouth parted slightly, and he bit down on his lower lip, rolling it back a little. The expression looked almost too perfect on him. Like a carefully crafted work of art designed to inspire libidinous sentiments in the viewer. One of his hands caught up with her own, fingers knotting together, and his other found its way to her waist, settling there for a moment before sliding down to the curve of her hip, and then back up and underneath the edge of the borrowed sweater, to find the warm skin that he knew lay beneath. He kissed her again (a distraction, or maybe just because he wanted to) before the thrum of her pulse tempted him back to her neck, and his lips dragged their way down to the place at the hollow of her throat where the flesh beat faintly.
And he kissed there, and his tongue touched and tasted the skin (newly clean and just a little salty). And beneath her sweater his fingers caressed her side, and then her stomach.
[Emily Littleton] He was a vision, perfect in practically every way. He was practiced, and patient, and passionate without pressuring her (too much) too hard (too fast). He was artful in the way that he tempted her, touched her, led her.... and in his shadow she was artless, clumsy, naive. (Numb.)
Her pulse pounded in her temples, echoing in her head, eclipsing the small sounds that their mouths, hands, and bodies made as he explored so the soft skin of her torso. Emily swallowed down small reactive sounds her body longed to make, selfishly pulling them away before they could slide across her vocal chords, slip past her teeth, tease his ears. These she kept from him, had kept from every one before him as well. She withheld them, jealously, and without apology or explanation.
She slid her palm up the plane of his chest, let her thumb graze the edge of his nipple in passing. Her body answered to his deft touch, and with his senses intertwined in her pattern he could feel the stifled sounds, the way his touch left ripples of awareness and arousal across her skin. He could feel also the hesitation in the way she touched him, as if her inability to reciprocate as eloquently might offend, might upset.
[Jarod Nightingale] Emily was nervous. But of course, why wouldn't she be? Jarod knew enough about himself to understand that he was... intense. He was an ocean, and people drowned in oceans. His hands and lips seemed to know Emily's body much better than a stranger had any right to. It spoke of experience, and of skill. But for all that Emily thought herself artless and clumsy, her own hesitant touches did cause him to react... and not at all unpleasantly. She might not have been able to feel the blood pulsing through his veins in the way he could her own, but her hand on his chest could feel the heart beating underneath. Not the frantic, thundering pace of her own, but it was strong and... a little faster than was normal.
When her thumb grazed over his nipple, it hardened, and he breathed out against the place he'd been kissing at the base of her throat, moving up and to the side so he could graze her skin with his teeth and bite down, gently. It was a subconscious habit, using his teeth when he was turned on. Instinct.
Emily made barely a sound but for her breathing. This was a little unusual for him, the relative silence. The lack of aural cues. He didn't need them, of course, but nonetheless it prompted him to murmur a gentle encouragement. "Don't be nervous... you've already done everything right."
And now both of his hands were at the hem of her sweater (his sweater, technically), and he pulled it up and over her head before letting it fall to the floor. The curls of her hair spilled back down over her shoulders, and he couldn't resist the temptation to thread one of his hands within it, feeling the soft strands pull through his fingers. He bent to kiss her shoulder, and both hands slid toward the clasp that held her bra in place, unhooking it easily and tracing his fingertips up to slide the straps slowly off her shoulders.
Here... he hesitated. Just slightly. Not of his own accord (he seemed quite comfortable), but because he wanted to be sure he wasn't pushing. That she was okay. The expression on his eyes seemed to say as much as he pulled back a little and looked at her, watching even though her own body already told him everything that was happening inside of it. One could only tell so much, after all. A quickened heart beat did not necessarily mean that her conscious mind was thinking along the same lines that her body was.
"Tell me... if you want me to stop."
[Emily Littleton] Emily's conscious mind was far, far away, caught up in the struggle of assimilating the past few hours (minutes [weeks] days). It had been squirreled away, sequestered with all of those carefully guarded sounds, the pieces of herself that she had not laid bare for him (even unwittingly). It was tangled up with all of the stories (legacies), whispers (echoes) that explained the small marred sections of her pattern that he had known so intimately and yet without any context.
Quiet but I'm sure there is something here...
When his teeth found her skin, took hold, bit down gently, Emily's breath hissed in quickly between her teeth and her muscles became taut beneath his fingertips for a moment. He could all but feel the low moan curl in the base of her throat though she denied him this sound as well. Instead she pulled him closer for a moment, so close that he could feel the flutter of her eyelashes against his skin, the brush of fabric between them for a languid moment until he eased the sweater over her head and laid aside one more layer (pretense) of separation.
Emily's skin was pale, and the moonlight lent it an ethereal luster. Her hair hung in loose curls, a dark shadows against the cityscape beyond his window. There was light enough to see by here, in his inner sanctum, but there was shadow enough to smooth and obscure the finer details. Here her eyes were merely dark once more and the nuance of their color, shading (their occasional, unabashed honesty) was lost.
Tell me... He implored her, and so it was that those dark eyes fixed him with a look of longing deeper than desire, yet less immediate than his own. Tell me... Her lips, full and reddened by arousal, parted slightly... then closed as she thought the better of whatever it was she might have shared. Emily let the bra straps slide further down her arms, and carefully set it aside. Each movement seemed deliberate and yet tentative (timid). Instead of speaking, she shook her head a little. (No... [don't stop] No... [don't leave me] No... [not here, not now]).
Then Emily closed the space between them. Her fingers found the places on his hips where they could trace the band of his jeans just so. Carefully, she lifted her heels off the floor, raising up just enough that she could lean in and .... ever so gently, ever so achingly softly, kiss his mouth, the corner of his lips, the edge of his jawline, without waiting for Jarod to initiate.
[Jarod Nightingale] There was a moment in there somewhere... when some very small piece of him twisted uncomfortably. Sensing, perhaps, that Emily wasn't quite as safe as some of his other companions. But it was only a very small, slightly discordant note. A warning that he ignored in favor of the much stronger and more immediate desire to be with her. To touch her. Taste her.
And when she closed the distance between them, and her bare chest pressed against his own, any thought beyond these things was almost instantly silenced (and forgotten.) For the first time, she initiated a kiss, and he bent to return it, but soon enough her lips traveled away again, and he made a sound in his throat that resonated quietly. For one achingly perfect moment, he moved against her, the muscles in his torso flexing as he felt her breasts drag across his skin. Then, a little impulsively, he put his hands on her hips and turned, stepping forward so that she'd have to move back, and if she didn't put up any particular signs of resistance, he'd keep going... until she had nowhere to go but back onto the bed.
And he went right along with her, climbing onto the (impossibly comfortable) mattress and pulling back the covers to push them aside and out of the way. (The sheets were white Egyptian Cotton, and from the impossibly soft feel to them, a high thread count.) One of Jarod's knees pushed in between Emily's own, and the other rested outside of her leg. At first, he bent down as if to kiss her again, but instead he ducked a little lower and let his tongue trace a route all the way down her throat and between the swell of her breasts. His breath came warm against her chest as he exhaled, and he moved one of his hands in a slow exploration up her stomach and to the side of her ribcage, tracing fingertips along the outward curve of a breast as he found it.
And then his lips moved in the same direction as his hand, and his tongue found a nipple and slid slowly across it.
[Emily Littleton] Withholding any part of herself from him had become almost painful. Rather than small moans, or purrs of delight, Jarod was rewarded with the subtle (shh... listen) shifts in her breathing. After he had attuned to these lesser tells, they were just as intimate, just as informative. Especially when paired with how freely her body responded to his touch, the flock of goosebumps that rose along her shoulder when his tongue flicked just so.... the way her lips parted, or her eyes closed, or her head tipped back as her back arched just so.
Jarod would not need the resonant sounds to map the many places along her skin that seemed so perfectly placed for his mouth, or his hands to seek out. He wouldn't need them, because whenever his eyes caught hers he could see his own magnificence reflected in the softness, the genuine regard there (affection [compassion] passion). Perhaps, in time -- and he would take his time, Emily had no doubt -- he wouldn't miss the aural cues as much as he might have thought.
Emily thought, for a moment, of how disparate their homes were. No, she couldn't even rightfully think of the place that she lived (slept) as home. For a moment, she was still beneath him... pensive. (Beneath him [in so many ways]). No, Emily was not entirely safe... here. But the small moment passed, and she slid her arms around him, to pull him down to her, to bury herself in his skin, his scent, his warmth.
She couldn't see the lights of the city from here, saved for where they were reflected around his room. Emily could scarcely perceive the world beyond his bedroom at all. Beyond the small space that they cooccupied, drawing ever closer. As her world narrowed down to nothing more than Jarod and the feelings he evoked in her, all this talk of Magic, of Awakening and expectations fell away. She unfurled in his arms. And while he wasn't safe, he was safe enough for now.
Later, when they had drawn so closely together than Emily could no longer tell where his warmth ended and her own began, when they drew in the same breaths and shared but one heartbeat... right before her capacity for conscious thought was eroded entirely and she shuddered for him, tangled up entirely in him... then the sound of her voice brushed against him, as she cried out against his skin.
