He barely registers when his back hits the wall, all but attempting to pour himself into her or perhaps just become one with each other in an attempt to at least have voices in their heads that they don't mind being there quite so much. He's basically trying to separate from his body, because she's in there right now so it stands to reason that if he can leave it, then it'll be okay. She might have his body, but then his mind will be out here and that would be fine too. He could live with that, just, being.
(Except, Athos, that's death. And you can't live with death. You are not a cat, you are not Schrödinger.)
The kiss is hard, almost brutal and he can't tell who is attempting to claim whom or if that's even what's happening here. Maybe the idea is to kiss the other senseless, to drown out the voices in their heads with endorphins and dopamine and adrenaline and the pounding of their hearts and the rush of their blood and the loudness of their breaths as the pull apart for precious, precious air.
She's shoved him down into a chair that four seconds ago he wouldn't even have been able to tell you existed at all, and it's all they can both do for a few moments is breathe. She's talking again - you'd think it would sound quieter, with all the heavy breathing they're trying so hard to keep under control - but it's loud and crisp and he can hear it just fine. So it was her doing the claiming. He's perfectly fine with that, in all honesty. He doesn't think about it as being a role he played before and well, because this is different.
And suddenly she's in his lap and she had to know she'd feel something if she did that - she proved not too long ago even that she's a fantastic kisser - but all he does is grab her and steady her and praise whatever power exists that he gets to have her this close again, because closeness apparently keeps their demons quiet.
(And don't think he'll forget that you called him your demon, your albatross. Those have interesting connotations too.)
But she leans against him and he moves his hands from her thighs, her knees, around her hips to her back, pulls her in with just the weight of them (such as it is.) Their breath mingles, breathing in and out each others' air, and her hands in his hair again are appreciated, do nothing for the lap thing, but she's asking him for help and he's never been able to say no. He can only say no to certain people, certain situations anyway, but to her, even when those times have occurred, he couldn't.
"He'd better. Don't know what he's thinking, screaming in your head like that when it's me who holds all the history. Who holds you now, because he's not here, he doesn't get to be. Not getting what he wants doesn't give him a free pass so he can shut the fuck up immediately." Maybe a little more than the weight of his arms. Alpha's never been bulky, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have some strength. It's just hard to tell where it's coming from.
When he continues, it's a little softer, and he's mostly looking down, partly for reasons and partially because his nightvision seems to do something kind of weird when it looks right into other eyes like that this close or something. "I don't know if you're mine quite the way I'm yours, at this point. Or I'd say something about it. But you are mine in other ways, and I'll..." What. Words. Athos and words, sometimes he's so eloquent and then others, it's just, anxiety. And all of this very recent anxiety? Man. "You are. In those ways. And I'll keep you safe."
She feels. She feels everything and that's what makes Monet go quiet. The wash of Athos' breath, the rumble in his chest, how his arms are warm and real and there around her. Monet is dead. Monet is gone. Monet was screaming so loud she couldn't focus and this quiets him. All of him. All of them.
No more ghosts.
For a moment it's so silent she feels like she's died when he keeps on. Centers her. Anchors her. Holds her in place so she won't fly apart or float away. More than his hands his voice seeps in through every jagged crack left behind by Bifrons and Monet, seeping in sweet as syrup and thick as tar to smooth over the bits of her that make her bleed when she breathes. Blunts them and braces them back in place. But that uncertainty- can she have that?
Can she have everything?
There's this constant uncertain undercurrent of want whenever she's around him. It's always been that way. Something in him that piques her interest. Maybe it's the ruin that Anne left him. Maybe it's wanting to find someone just as broken and try to fix them. Maybe it's just his too old eyes and his too soft hands and his all too rare smile. Maybe it's nothing and all of this but she wants, has wanted, but doesn't know if it's safe to want. If he wants back. If they can have instead of yearn. The simple answer is that it's never safe. It'll never be safe. And oh, he wants to keep her safe from Monet and that he can do.
But he can't protect her from herself.
She wants him. Like the axe wants the turkey, she wants him and for this moment it seems as though she and she alone has him. Not Anne. Not even the ghost of her.
There's a lingering thought of James, of Natalia, both slip aside as she pulls herself all the more close to him, pressing her lips along his pulse, along his jaw, against his mouth once more to silence that foolish promise. He can't save her from what will kill her. But he can make the idea of sticking around a little bit longer more appealing. He can remind her to be less of a weapon. This kiss is gentler, sweeter. Kinder.
Less like a fight and more like an invitation. She even goes so far as to take one of his hands and slide it down to rest on her hip again, pulling back to catch his eyes as she rolls against that stiffness she'd caused earlier. "I can be yours however you want me- for tonight."
Just tonight. She can't be certain of anything more.
they are a lot of things but 'sweet' isn't typically one of the first adjectives that comes to mind
Athos supposes that after what he said - and immediately after saying it he'd decided that it was really just, such a stupid thing to say, because he's tried to protect people before and if nothing else history has shown him to some exponential power that he's only good at it when they aren't people he's invested in personally - he should have expected a reaction like that. Something softer, since that's what people do, right? People are soft with the ones who they care about.
They're also softer with people who are broken, or people they think can't handle things properly, which isn't exactly the same thing but comes close enough, and it's interesting sometimes to consider that we treat those we love the most the same as we treat innocents and the mentally incapable. Gentleness isn't a response often given to the strong, to the point where it tends to take them the most off-guard of them all.
He thinks too much. He almost preferred the almost-violence of what they were doing before, if only because it afforded less of a chance, not that he couldn't still rise to the occasion.
"I didn't-" mean it like that. Not specifically, anyway, even if he can't particularly argue he's entirely opposed to the idea. There's been quite an odd sort of reaction between them for a while now, one that at some point he just decided to stop attempting to figure out, because people have never really been his strong suit and the ones like her, the ones who have learned to shift and become what they feel like for however long or short a time they wish to, well they're all the more difficult to pin down. He doesn't enjoy the almost inevitable comparison to Anne that some of Juliett's traits draw, but he's not unaware of them. They're not all bad - he did, does, love Anne in the first place, albeit in a very different way than he does Juliett. Still, they're unfair comparisons to begin with.
He's not actually sure he likes having this decision. He wants to, right now he definitely wants to, but. It's worrying on some level. But what's the alternative? Hearing dead lovers haunt them in their thoughts? That tends to go poorly even for well-adjusted people, and if he was thinking too much before, he definitely is now, expression not worried precisely but far less certain than usual.
So in light of that expression it's probably not that surprising that he finally breaks eye contact, looks somewhere over her shoulder instead and gives more or less a non-answer. It's okay, it annoys him too. "Probably a good idea. Not any more than tonight, anyway."
"You don't." There's wanting, wanting, and wanting. They're...caught somewhere in between the second and third. More than an urge, less than a need. A low burning thing full of embers and potential that Athos, at least, seems reluctant to stir.
Seeing as normally he's the more sane of them? It's probably best to follow his gut and not. Maybe another time but- she makes no move to leave his lap. While nothing more may come to pass this is...the closeness helps to quiet her ghosts. And while it feels a little lie abandonment when he looks away, a little like lying when he won't give a straight answer she can't truly begrudge him the confusion.
No.
Scratch that.
She can. She has ever been nothing but forthright with him in her own strange way. That he would dodge something so direct as this for the sake of...what? Pride? Propriety? Her feelings? Yes or no. That's what she needs now more than the closeness. Ambiguity in consent is problematic on so many levels and she's never stood for it in the past. She'll not stand for it now.
"Oliver." She'd promised to never, but here she is, one hand curling in his hair to tug his face back so they're eye to eye again. "Yes or no. No is fine. I'll get up, order dinner, and we'll watch something terrible on the network. But you need to be clear. My whole existence is vague insinuation and nuanced, nebulous orders, inferred affection and multiple layers of meaning I had to put up with from Monet. I do not need that here with you."
He just. For someone who feels things quite as deeply as he does sometimes he's remarkably ill-equipped to handle strong emotions and hoo boy right now emotions are running very high and fast and tight. As much as he wants, and wants her, and wants to feel close like that, open like that, vaguely safe like that again with someone, he's just...
If they do it now it's not them sticking it to Monet and Anne, is it? It's them both running from them; it's both he and her allowing themselves to be twisted and torn up by their ex lovers once again and he'd just, he'd rather it not be like that. But maybe it isn't already? Maybe that's not what it would be, maybe it would just be what it is, and maybe he's overthinking it like he overthinks so many other things already. He's been doing it constantly since he first realised she was talking to it, doing it just shy of constantly before that for other less obsessive reasons, and he's evasive now because he can't make up his mind even when literally given a this or that question and Juliett's right to seem dissatisfied with that, he thinks in the split second before she says his name and jerks him right out of those thoughts too.
Olivier, and she barely needed her hand to tug him back to face her because his eyes were seeking hers out already, and they're open and he's still not sure. He stares while he considers this, and then retroactively her explanation hits, and he realises she wants to not be guessing. She wants clarity, and even though he's typically not particularly great at that, he can try. "I want to. We've had -- whatever this is, for a while. I've thought about it. I just don't know if - if it would be because of them or just in spite. I'm just tired of feeling controlled. By them, by... This, I don't know. Everything. To stop thinking." And now he's just doing that aloud, really, which actually isn't what she asked for, might in fact be the opposite of what she asked for to be honest, and he reins it back in. It's a yes or no question, Athos - Olivier, Alpha, whoever you are. Why it has to be his decision, he's not sure, since she's apparently fine with either option. This isn't his field, really. Clearly. "I don't want to order dinner. Or watch the network. That's not going to help." Actually that makes his skin itch and bones fidget beneath tendons alone, and his hands tighten both to stave off the phantom feeling of both of those and just to feel her beneath his palms. "You always help."
"No. No 'I want' or 'I don't want' or dancing around it. Simple question, simple answer." She draws him in like poison gas, breathing down every waft of uncertainty. Swallows it back and down while her fingers comb through his hair, tap against his topmost port. This needn't be complicated. They both have far, far too much of complication. "Yes or no."
Yes had been implied, certainly, with how he clung, how he spoke, how he looked at her- but no more implications. No more inferences. No more nuance. No more subtlety. No more fucking complications. Just.
She's making him be very specific and that is just so not his natural state. Decisive? Perhaps, but in certain situations. Actually no, specific isn't even incorrect either - he can be specific. He can be decisive, they're just. They're not what he defaults to - they're survival mechanisms.
That doesn't even make sense, but. Athos bends so far back on himself, thinks himself into corners and twists himself into knots, lets anxiety - occasionally - put a stone in his stomach and sink him to the bottom.
I'm stopping the poetry there, you get the gist.
But she wants - needs, actually, though, because he doesn't think she just wants this. Ever since he's known her he's not been too bad at understanding her and right now she's practically comprised of neon fucking signs. She needs clarity. She's not just asking or demanding it. So he gives it to her, finally. There is a sound from the back of his throat, deep in his chest, that she's never heard and he hasn't heard in a long time - not really a growl but the sort of sound that comes directly before a hard-won response. If that makes literally any sense at all.
"Yes." He pulls her closer towards himself, down against him, even while he turns his face up towards her enough to be close enough to her face for the breath and warmth of their words to register on each others' cheeks. She has her hands in his hair, her fingers at his ports, and he has his breath on her skin, her weight against his hardness. "Yes, I want you." Maybe against the wall here in a minute, maybe just however you want him - he's got preferences but. Well.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
now it sounds like 'sucrose'
(Except, Athos, that's death. And you can't live with death. You are not a cat, you are not Schrödinger.)
The kiss is hard, almost brutal and he can't tell who is attempting to claim whom or if that's even what's happening here. Maybe the idea is to kiss the other senseless, to drown out the voices in their heads with endorphins and dopamine and adrenaline and the pounding of their hearts and the rush of their blood and the loudness of their breaths as the pull apart for precious, precious air.
She's shoved him down into a chair that four seconds ago he wouldn't even have been able to tell you existed at all, and it's all they can both do for a few moments is breathe. She's talking again - you'd think it would sound quieter, with all the heavy breathing they're trying so hard to keep under control - but it's loud and crisp and he can hear it just fine. So it was her doing the claiming. He's perfectly fine with that, in all honesty. He doesn't think about it as being a role he played before and well, because this is different.
And suddenly she's in his lap and she had to know she'd feel something if she did that - she proved not too long ago even that she's a fantastic kisser - but all he does is grab her and steady her and praise whatever power exists that he gets to have her this close again, because closeness apparently keeps their demons quiet.
(And don't think he'll forget that you called him your demon, your albatross. Those have interesting connotations too.)
But she leans against him and he moves his hands from her thighs, her knees, around her hips to her back, pulls her in with just the weight of them (such as it is.) Their breath mingles, breathing in and out each others' air, and her hands in his hair again are appreciated, do nothing for the lap thing, but she's asking him for help and he's never been able to say no. He can only say no to certain people, certain situations anyway, but to her, even when those times have occurred, he couldn't.
"He'd better. Don't know what he's thinking, screaming in your head like that when it's me who holds all the history. Who holds you now, because he's not here, he doesn't get to be. Not getting what he wants doesn't give him a free pass so he can shut the fuck up immediately." Maybe a little more than the weight of his arms. Alpha's never been bulky, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have some strength. It's just hard to tell where it's coming from.
When he continues, it's a little softer, and he's mostly looking down, partly for reasons and partially because his nightvision seems to do something kind of weird when it looks right into other eyes like that this close or something. "I don't know if you're mine quite the way I'm yours, at this point. Or I'd say something about it. But you are mine in other ways, and I'll..." What. Words. Athos and words, sometimes he's so eloquent and then others, it's just, anxiety. And all of this very recent anxiety? Man. "You are. In those ways. And I'll keep you safe."
well they are sweet
No more ghosts.
For a moment it's so silent she feels like she's died when he keeps on. Centers her. Anchors her. Holds her in place so she won't fly apart or float away. More than his hands his voice seeps in through every jagged crack left behind by Bifrons and Monet, seeping in sweet as syrup and thick as tar to smooth over the bits of her that make her bleed when she breathes. Blunts them and braces them back in place. But that uncertainty- can she have that?
Can she have everything?
There's this constant uncertain undercurrent of want whenever she's around him. It's always been that way. Something in him that piques her interest. Maybe it's the ruin that Anne left him. Maybe it's wanting to find someone just as broken and try to fix them. Maybe it's just his too old eyes and his too soft hands and his all too rare smile. Maybe it's nothing and all of this but she wants, has wanted, but doesn't know if it's safe to want. If he wants back. If they can have instead of yearn. The simple answer is that it's never safe. It'll never be safe. And oh, he wants to keep her safe from Monet and that he can do.
But he can't protect her from herself.
She wants him. Like the axe wants the turkey, she wants him and for this moment it seems as though she and she alone has him. Not Anne. Not even the ghost of her.
There's a lingering thought of James, of Natalia, both slip aside as she pulls herself all the more close to him, pressing her lips along his pulse, along his jaw, against his mouth once more to silence that foolish promise. He can't save her from what will kill her. But he can make the idea of sticking around a little bit longer more appealing. He can remind her to be less of a weapon. This kiss is gentler, sweeter. Kinder.
Less like a fight and more like an invitation. She even goes so far as to take one of his hands and slide it down to rest on her hip again, pulling back to catch his eyes as she rolls against that stiffness she'd caused earlier. "I can be yours however you want me- for tonight."
Just tonight. She can't be certain of anything more.
they are a lot of things but 'sweet' isn't typically one of the first adjectives that comes to mind
They're also softer with people who are broken, or people they think can't handle things properly, which isn't exactly the same thing but comes close enough, and it's interesting sometimes to consider that we treat those we love the most the same as we treat innocents and the mentally incapable. Gentleness isn't a response often given to the strong, to the point where it tends to take them the most off-guard of them all.
He thinks too much. He almost preferred the almost-violence of what they were doing before, if only because it afforded less of a chance, not that he couldn't still rise to the occasion.
"I didn't-" mean it like that. Not specifically, anyway, even if he can't particularly argue he's entirely opposed to the idea. There's been quite an odd sort of reaction between them for a while now, one that at some point he just decided to stop attempting to figure out, because people have never really been his strong suit and the ones like her, the ones who have learned to shift and become what they feel like for however long or short a time they wish to, well they're all the more difficult to pin down. He doesn't enjoy the almost inevitable comparison to Anne that some of Juliett's traits draw, but he's not unaware of them. They're not all bad - he did, does, love Anne in the first place, albeit in a very different way than he does Juliett. Still, they're unfair comparisons to begin with.
He's not actually sure he likes having this decision. He wants to, right now he definitely wants to, but. It's worrying on some level. But what's the alternative? Hearing dead lovers haunt them in their thoughts? That tends to go poorly even for well-adjusted people, and if he was thinking too much before, he definitely is now, expression not worried precisely but far less certain than usual.
So in light of that expression it's probably not that surprising that he finally breaks eye contact, looks somewhere over her shoulder instead and gives more or less a non-answer. It's okay, it annoys him too. "Probably a good idea. Not any more than tonight, anyway."
bittersweet
Seeing as normally he's the more sane of them? It's probably best to follow his gut and not. Maybe another time but- she makes no move to leave his lap. While nothing more may come to pass this is...the closeness helps to quiet her ghosts. And while it feels a little lie abandonment when he looks away, a little like lying when he won't give a straight answer she can't truly begrudge him the confusion.
No.
Scratch that.
She can. She has ever been nothing but forthright with him in her own strange way. That he would dodge something so direct as this for the sake of...what? Pride? Propriety? Her feelings? Yes or no. That's what she needs now more than the closeness. Ambiguity in consent is problematic on so many levels and she's never stood for it in the past. She'll not stand for it now.
"Oliver." She'd promised to never, but here she is, one hand curling in his hair to tug his face back so they're eye to eye again. "Yes or no. No is fine. I'll get up, order dinner, and we'll watch something terrible on the network. But you need to be clear. My whole existence is vague insinuation and nuanced, nebulous orders, inferred affection and multiple layers of meaning I had to put up with from Monet. I do not need that here with you."
ah yes that one there we go
If they do it now it's not them sticking it to Monet and Anne, is it? It's them both running from them; it's both he and her allowing themselves to be twisted and torn up by their ex lovers once again and he'd just, he'd rather it not be like that. But maybe it isn't already? Maybe that's not what it would be, maybe it would just be what it is, and maybe he's overthinking it like he overthinks so many other things already. He's been doing it constantly since he first realised she was talking to it, doing it just shy of constantly before that for other less obsessive reasons, and he's evasive now because he can't make up his mind even when literally given a this or that question and Juliett's right to seem dissatisfied with that, he thinks in the split second before she says his name and jerks him right out of those thoughts too.
Olivier, and she barely needed her hand to tug him back to face her because his eyes were seeking hers out already, and they're open and he's still not sure. He stares while he considers this, and then retroactively her explanation hits, and he realises she wants to not be guessing. She wants clarity, and even though he's typically not particularly great at that, he can try. "I want to. We've had -- whatever this is, for a while. I've thought about it. I just don't know if - if it would be because of them or just in spite. I'm just tired of feeling controlled. By them, by... This, I don't know. Everything. To stop thinking." And now he's just doing that aloud, really, which actually isn't what she asked for, might in fact be the opposite of what she asked for to be honest, and he reins it back in. It's a yes or no question, Athos - Olivier, Alpha, whoever you are. Why it has to be his decision, he's not sure, since she's apparently fine with either option. This isn't his field, really. Clearly. "I don't want to order dinner. Or watch the network. That's not going to help." Actually that makes his skin itch and bones fidget beneath tendons alone, and his hands tighten both to stave off the phantom feeling of both of those and just to feel her beneath his palms. "You always help."
I thought so
Yes had been implied, certainly, with how he clung, how he spoke, how he looked at her- but no more implications. No more inferences. No more nuance. No more subtlety. No more fucking complications. Just.
Yes or no.
There is nothing in the world more simple.
u always kno best
That doesn't even make sense, but. Athos bends so far back on himself, thinks himself into corners and twists himself into knots, lets anxiety - occasionally - put a stone in his stomach and sink him to the bottom.
I'm stopping the poetry there, you get the gist.
But she wants - needs, actually, though, because he doesn't think she just wants this. Ever since he's known her he's not been too bad at understanding her and right now she's practically comprised of neon fucking signs. She needs clarity. She's not just asking or demanding it. So he gives it to her, finally. There is a sound from the back of his throat, deep in his chest, that she's never heard and he hasn't heard in a long time - not really a growl but the sort of sound that comes directly before a hard-won response. If that makes literally any sense at all.
"Yes." He pulls her closer towards himself, down against him, even while he turns his face up towards her enough to be close enough to her face for the breath and warmth of their words to register on each others' cheeks. She has her hands in his hair, her fingers at his ports, and he has his breath on her skin, her weight against his hardness. "Yes, I want you." Maybe against the wall here in a minute, maybe just however you want him - he's got preferences but. Well.