It's not the scheduled cattle-run weekend, though it is a weekend. It's not Denver, though it is close by. It's one of those multimillion-dollar ranches south and west of city limits, with brooks and foothills and meadows and woodlands; deer that graze in the early mornings, birds of prey that hunt small mammals from a thousand feet up in the air. The owner of the ranch does not ranch at all, nor farm. He does ride for pleasure, though, and he has a stable of beautiful thoroughbreds, some of them former racers.
The air is warm, and the sun is bright. There's a gazebo and there are airy white awnings shading the lawn. There are drinks and appetizers circulating on trays. The women wear sundresses and large sunglasses, large hats. The men wear light shirts, light trousers.
Some friend of the family or family of the friend invited Calden, invited Avery. One way or another, through some convoluted association or another, they're both here, though not precisely here together. His height sets him apart, along with his rugged build and the unruliness of his hair, which is approaching shaggy after six or eight weeks of no trims, and of course: one of those innumerable red-checked shirts of his, a spot of homegrown unstylish color amidst the lighter hues everyone else wears.
He's standing in the sun, which brings out the notes of red in his hair; he has a bottle of beer in hand and he's talking to someone, animated, smiling, his eyes skimming away from his conversational partner the way our eyes do in casual dialogue,
skimming across a distance of circulating trays and sundresses and large-brimmed hats,
catching on Avery, too far away to polite call out to. He looks at her anyway, a beat longer than he would have if he didn't recognize her so intimately; his smile spreads wider and he tips an imaginary hat her way before turning back to his acquaintance.
--
Somewhat later, he catches up to her. Appears at her elbow as she's circulating through the crowd.
"Miss Chase," he greets here. "Fancy running into you here."
Avery ChaseFriends of her father's. New friends, in a sense, and old friends too: the owner's mother knows Avery's father. They are here for the late-summer party, and it is 'warm' if you want to be kind about the weather, 'unbearably fucking hot' if you're a bit more crass and not in attendance today. Avery's younger brother is around back playing a pickup game of basketball with other teenagers who would otherwise be bored and prone to vandalism despite their privilege. Her father is seated under some of those awnings on some lawn furniture, wearing short sleeves and sipping something cold; the glass sweats, like everyone sweats as elegantly as they can.
As for herself, Avery is indeed in a sundress and a pair of fashionable sunglasses today, but she has eschewed the large hat. Her hair is in a side chignon, adorned with a pale pink peony. She is drinking something iced as well from a long straw in a long, slender glass, a ladylike cocktail of pretty colors and resembling lemonade that uses agave nectar instead of such-and-such. Like many of the women here, she's eschewed the garden party dress along with the hat, wearing a pair of tailored gray shorts that end in a crisp, equally tailored fold a couple of inches above her knee and a sleeveless yet collared blouse that flutters with chiffon atop whatever light fabric serves as its shell. Her jewelry is simple and delicate: a slim bracelet with a single gemstone that echoes the color of the flower in her hair, a rose gold ring on her right hand, small diamonds in her earlobes. The same ones she was given by her father on her 16th birthday, in fact.
She is talking to a woman about her own age; they are exchanging contact information and insisting that they'll get together for a drink. If Avery has not noticed Calden it is because he is not the only kinfolk here; she has seem a few, some of his tribe, a couple of her own, from various areas. Family of sept members, of caern protectors, or her own father and brother. His scent, dim as it is in comparison to some others, is lost in the air and the crowd. In fact, she does not even notice him seeing her, and so perhaps he misses the opportunity to tip that imaginary hat.
But there is some blessing in that: seeing her and not being seen. Watching her laughing, smiling, talking to someone else, shining in the gathering, as though she could help it.
It's later, when she's making her way over to the shaded buffet tents to get another drink and a plate of barbecue chicken and red potato salad, that Calden catches up to her. She glances to the side as he comes up nearby, stepping out of the way for the next person to pick up their plate, and then beams to see him.
"Mr. White!" she says delightedly, as formally, the pleasure glittering in her voice and showing, as pink as the flower in her hair, in the color of her cheeks. "How have you been?"
Calden White"Well," he replies, his smile warm, warm, spreading broader than a polite smile between polite acquaintances ought to -- like he can't quite contain it. But then a moment later he does contain it; he remembers Certain Things, certain stories about certain people and certain horrific events.
He amends: "Well enough."
His hand touches her arm: his fingertips, the outside of her elbow. It's perfectly acceptable, perfectly friendly and no more. Even so, she can see that flicker of heat run right into his eyes. She can see, too, how he sobers to ask, quiet now:
"How have you been?"
Avery ChaseThese are dark times. Dark and uncertain. And there are those in power, those who whisper salvation in the ears of the damned though their salvation looks very much like armageddon. To think: that, right now, is the lesser threat. Avery can see Calden's eyes flickering, though her own are hidden behind those shades.
As soon as she saw him she wanted to take his hand and walk away, into that sprawling ranch home to a guest bedroom and lock the door and curtain the windows and undress him with her hands and wrap herself naked around him, feel his torso between her thighs and his chest to her chest and his arms folding heavy and warm around her. Avery still wants that, quite keenly, to see him standing there in one of his red-checked shirts with those eyes and that smile and that hair that looks so perfect between her fingers when he is anointing himself with the taste of her pleasure.
Calden touches her and her lips flicker in a soft smile, and the waiter and the host and hostess and guests and anyone else within about thirty miles could see the chemistry sparking between the two of them. It's nearly an arc between his fingertips and her flesh. It's there in her smile, in the way that smile is also a breath-catching, because of that Perfectly Acceptable, Perfectly Friendly touch.
Oh yeah, thinks the server manning the buffet, they're gonna bone.
"Well enough," she murmurs in answer, echoing him.
Avery steps away from the touch, though it seems unrelated to anything but the desire to move along, taking her plate and walking away, carrying that and a refreshed cocktail, her hands full. She waits for Calden, if he gets his own food, and then heads towards a spot of shade beneath a tree, some distance from the rest of the party. It will be noticeable, to mortals and other kin alike, that she goes to sit with him on a picnic blanket, talking privately if not lounging around playing footsie, but Avery seems unconcerned.
"I suppose you've heard of... things that have happened at the Crescent?"
Calden WhiteCalden picks up some food from the buffet tables -- barbecued ribs slathered in sauce, potato salad, a red velvet cupcake. He still has his cold beer in a brown bottle, and as he follows Avery out onto the lawn,
because of course he follows her, even though neither one of them mentioned it and neither one of them discussed it,
he tips the bottle back for a sip. The sweating glass catches the sunlight. It seems almost impossible, on those brilliant, hot summer's day, that such horrors exist in the night. That such horrors have happened so very recently, and to those not so very far removed from them.
They sit in the lawn, on a picnic blanket. They're a stone's throw from the other guests, and there's enough unmistakable chemistry between them that no one comes ambling over to join the conversation. Calden tugs the blanket smooth before he comes down on it, sighing a little as though glad to be off his feet.
He's wearing boots, of course. He wiggles his toes in them, considers taking them off. Then, turning as Avery speaks --
"Yeah. Indirectly, but I heard of it. The guy that ... lynchpin'd it was one of Stag's, is what I gathered." He sips from his beer again, a long draw that gives him time to think. "Bad situation. I always thought Cold Crescent was pretty secure, with its high-tech security and all.
"Were you there?" His brow furrows. "Are you okay, really?"
Avery ChaseThey make, in this gathering, a very interesting couple. He's much older than she is, though anyone who has spoken with her would also say that she seems much older than she is. Her family's wealth is in property, banking, all sorts of fine things related to the assigning of value to this or that and getting other people to agree with you: yes, yes, this or that is worth this or that. His family's wealth is both grounded and visceral; value related to literal life and death, to hunger, to hard work and what that is worth, particularly in this day and age. She's so fair and fine and lovely, made of marble and gold, her laughter light and her movements graceful but not delicate. He is handsome in an old-fashioned way that trends towards rakishness when he smiles a certain way, with powerful arms and just a perfect touch of old-cowboy swagger and roughness.
And the chemistry between them, as has been noted, is as potent and undeniable as an electrical storm. They draw eyes as they walk across the grass and sit themselves down on the picnic blanket the way a collapsing star draws all nearby energy and mass; they stir whispers like a maelstrom every time Avery smiles at him, her cheeks flushing faintly with pleasure at his attention and his proximity. Most people, though perhaps not even Calden himself -- with nothing else to compare it to -- can see how her demeanor changed when he approached her. How she lit up. How the seriousness with which she carries herself seemed to lift off her shoulders. They can almost hear her heart quicken.
Were she an animal, and most do not know that she is, her tail would be wagging. Her ears would be perked.
--
What Calden sees is a wry little smile on her face as he wiggles his feet out of his boots. Hers are in metallic gladiator sandals, the straps thin and the leather supple. She leaves them on, setting her plate and glass down on a handy little table nearby before she lays out on her side, eating in recline like some ancient Roman, her head propped on her hand. They could be talking about movies, about people they know, about anything; the hint that they are discussing something far darker than conversational nonsense is in the fact that Avery does not actually reach for any of her food. Not just yet.
She gives a small nod, that smile falling, her brows tugging together behind the rims of her sunglasses. "He was," she confirms quietly, without accusation. Plenty of Silver Fangs have performed unspeakable acts, or fallen, and she has heard enough half moons arguing about whether Champion of Honor was corrupted or merely controlled to shy from making a judgement. He's dead. The only punishments left to be leveled would be against his name, and the truth is, in end times, all names will be forgotten anyway.
It's a nihilistic viewpoint. It's one she has learned to keep to herself.
"We still aren't sure how it happened," she tells him, regarding security. "What was missed. It's... unsettling." He asks if she was there. Avery shakes her head. He asks her if she's really okay. She doesn't do or say anything for a moment. Her compostable recycled-plastic fork is twirled between her fingertips, her brow furrowing just as deeply as his does.
"More or less," she says finally, and pushes the tines of the fork into the potato salad. "The sept is evacuated, which to me almost seems as though it's already fallen -- a sept without a caern is only held together by its unity, and its people are scattered now. The elders refuse to speak to anyone beneath a certain rank. Everyone is looking for answers; Cliaths and Fosterns are making plans to investigate on their own and I am simultaneously wanting to caution them to be obedient and trust those above them and wanting to scream at those who withhold knowledge from us."
Avery breathes in deeply, then gives a sharp little shake of her head. "If our enemies wanted to throw us into fearful chaos and distraction, perhaps they are succeeding. And if all they wanted to do was to kill more than a dozen of our number, a dozen of our most trusted, and violate our sacred space, then they absolutely succeeded, and it sickens me. It frightens me." There's a beat, and a pulse of this in the air: "It enrages me."
Calden WhiteIt may be apparent to everyone within a 30 mile radius that they have chemistry deserving of Nobel prizes. It may be apparent to everyone at this garden party that she lit up when she saw him. What is apparent to Calden, though, is how brightly she shone even when she didn't know he was here. How brilliant her laughter was, and how the sun lived in her skin and her hair and her eyes; how she drew the eye like a magnet; how even the uninitiated and the mundane dropped into her orbit.
To chitchat. To laugh. To bask, like Icarus spiraling ever closer to a star too bright for his waxen wings.
Even now, speaking of such dark things -- of atrocities, of violated safe-spaces and scattered septs, of the awful guilt that always comes after such calamities: what did we miss? what could we have seen? -- even now, she lights up her space. His eyes are on her and he hears her, he's listening, of course he is; he hears her speak of shock and fear and the very real defeat the Good Guys have sustained, but
what is beating quick and fluttering through his veins is that surge of adoration. That somersault his heart turns sometimes when he sees her smile. Or toss her hair back. Or burn the way she does now, with righteousness and determination and, yes: with rage.
She finishes. And Calden doesn't think. He doesn't think of the people around, the friends-of-friends or the family-of-family or whatever they are to him. He leans across to her, his palm taking that shift of his weight, and he kisses her mouth.
It is quick and light at first. But only at first. Then it lingers; his eyes close. When they open again he almost expects the skies to have turned, but no. The sun is still brilliant. The air is still hot. And he looks her in the eye a moment, very serious.
"Every time I see you," he says quietly, "you mean that much more to me. I love your courage. And your incorruptibility. But be careful, Avery."
Avery ChaseNow that was the last response Avery expected. Not the words: the 'be careful', at least, she could have seen coming. But the way Calden surges over to her, hand on the blanket, body leaning down so he can capture her mouth, catches her off guard. She breathes in suddenly, and a few eyes in the party go wide; apparently this isn't the first time the two are meeting. Apparently they've been seeing one another for some time, because otherwise he is going to get slapped.
But he doesn't. And Avery doesn't get up and walk quickly away. She is caught off guard but today, somehow, the kiss taps into something that is not indignation or affront. She breathes in suddenly, then exhales in a rush and kisses him back. It's softer on her end, partly because their conversation had veered her rather firmly away from thoughts of stripping him down or feeling him against her and into territories of terror, uncertainty, and fury. He can sense that when he kisses her, the way she does not lose herself in it because, frankly, thinking about what happened at Cold Crescent or the possible defeat of a bastion of their kind does not fill her with...
well. Anything but terror, uncertainty, and fury.
So there's a tenderness in her eyes when he draws back that is perhaps a little uncomfortably close to patience, tolerance, or mere acceptance. Her brow is a little furrowed; her eyes are still hidden.
"Calden, darling," she says, achingly. "I am seldom rash."
Calden WhiteHe did get slapped, the first time he kissed her. To this day he doesn't quite know why. If it was because he kissed her without warning, without really even knowing her. If it was because she's a lady, and that's what ladies do. If it was because she wanted him just as badly, needed to channel that want into something sharp and physical and raw as a slap. He doesn't know why, but he remembers it, and somehow what came after was only made sweeter by it.
Digression, anyway. Point is: he kisses her, leans down on one hand to do so, and she neither slaps him nor pushes him away. She accepts it, and of course in the aftermath he is slightly abashed, but -- he says what he says all the same. She says what she says.
He laughs a little under his breath. And he sets his plate aside; his beer. He lays back on the picnic blanket, stretching out beside her.
"Obviously," he murmurs, "the same can't be said of me." His head turns. He looks at her. "Should I apologize?"
Avery ChaseAvery hasn't ever given much thought to that slap. She was high that night: on the weight of the moon, the hunt, the blood and meat she'd gorged on, the scotch, the smell of the same man who is now sitting so close to her, kissing her as though no one else is around when some people are quite close indeed. The smell of him.
God. She's wary of him finding out what it does to her when he's slightly scented by summer sweat, when the dusty clothes have been shed and it's just him. Maybe he already knows.
But: she doesn't really know, because she hasn't much considered it. Perhaps it was just her startlement. Now she channels that into that tolerant look, that Oh, Calden. She doesn't slap him and then kiss him back. But then, that night it might have only been her slightly confused reaction to a kiss that she had to have seen coming and yet did not see coming right that very moment. Today, her mind is dark with what is happening,
and thoughts of the descriptions she's heard of what happened on the 43rd floor.
Calden is abashed, to see in her brow and hear in her voice that while his kiss was welcomed and even returned, it was ...oddly timed. It isn't that Avery can't lose herself in him, or doesn't want to; he has to know that. He has to remember all the times he's seen her overwhelmed by her own pleasure in him, in orgasm or in simple closeness and fondness and delight at spending time together or the way she kisses him like she's starved for it just as easily as he has to be able to remember the times his attempts to control himself have slipped and he's startled her or his timing has been off or he's even, a couple of times, hurt her. He has to remember both, of course, but it may be difficult for him to recall that the former is far, far more frequent than the latter. Avery has no trouble remembering, after all, how her heart's pace rushes forward every time she sees him,
or how she smiles when she thinks of him.
At his words, she seems amused. "No," she says, easily, the smile still playing on her lips. Perhaps she's answering both his statement and his question. "Though perhaps you should have kissed me when you first saw me, and not when you couldn't help yourself anymore."
Avery stirs her potato salad, then lifts a forkful to her mouth. She's thoughtful. "I told my father I've been seeing you. He did not quite say 'duh', but I could see it in his eyes."
Calden WhiteThe furrow in his brow clears; he smiles, and this one is not rakish, but it changes his face and opens it up and clears it and warms it all at once. That is his immediate, visceral response -- to her no, to her suggestion, to what she tells him about what she told her father. Only a moment later does he school his face into something approaching wry humor.
"That's what you get for actually having a good relationship with your father," he teases gently. "I'm pretty certain my dad thinks I've been squandering my fortune on hookers and heroin every other weekend."
Then he grows serious; quiet. "Was your father happy for you?"
Avery ChaseAvery eats during their conversation. She didn't get the plate just to be polite. Her eyebrows lift at what he says of his father, of what his father might think he's doing every other weekend -- even if lately their meetings haven't exactly been that regular. She only briefly met him the one time she's gone home with Calden to sleep with him in his bed, but it was very brief indeed and he was not impolite to her. He did not call her a hooker or anything of the sort. So her eyebrows raise and her mouth twists wryly, if a bit sympathetically.
She can't imagine how she'd get by with only one parent, if her relationship with that one parent was anywhere near as combative as Calden and his father's.
Was he happy?
She smiles softly. "He was curious, but didn't ask anything untoward or inappropriate." Avery pushes herself to sit up, reaching for her glass. "If he has concerns, he held his tongue about them. He knows, of course, about... the gentleman back east that I told you about."
That is spoken quietly, the way one is gentle not to touch a wound too firmly when it is healing. A mere graze of thought over those emotional lacerations.
Avery sets her glass back down and reaches up, removing her sunglasses, which have left little impressions on either side of the bridge of her nose, but in the shade now her eyes are finally revealed, and everything in them. She meets Calden's. "I think he's comforted to see that I'm --" moving on sounds wrong to her ears, feels odd on her tongue. Her brows stitch together for a moment, then clear. "That I'm spending time with someone whose company I enjoy," she finishes, smiling at him with the clearing of that momentary expression from her features.
She recognizes her own avoidance as soon as the words settle in the air, and huffs a quiet, uneasy laugh at herself, glancing downward, glancing to the side, before she looks back at him directly. "I'm quite pleased when I'm in your company, Calden," she murmurs. "Though I am not always 'happy', I do feel very good -- even in the darkest times -- when you're by my side."
Her tongue slips past her lips, moistens them. "I mean to say... I would like to continue seeing you. Perhaps more often than we do currently. And exclusively."
Calden WhiteWith his somewhat oldfashioned understanding of the word, 'gentleman' is not quite the noun Calden would have applied to Avery's acquaintance back east. Perhaps a little of that intrinsic disapproval flickers in his eyes -- not of her or her word choice, of course, but of the man himself -- but he holds his tongue.
And she goes on. And he smiles when she does, almost without realizing it, because that is her effect on those around her. Almost without realizing it herself, he suspects. He grows serious as she does too, meeting her eyes when she comes to look at him, sunglasses-less, the color and clarity and directness of her gaze such that he thinks again: this is a woman incapable of dissemblance. Or at least, one who would never lie to him.
That, too, he keeps to himself. He has better things to think about right now:
"I'd like that," he replies quietly. "I'd like to see you more. I'd love it if we were exclusive." A wry turn to his mouth -- "Though I think we already are.
"Will you be coming up to the ranch more often, then? I can try to arrange more trips to the city from my end." A pause. "Should I introduce myself to your father and your brother at some point?"
Avery ChasePeople break up all the time. Things don't work out. And if that is all that had happened with Avery, one could understand the ending and the gentleman in question as easily as one can understand her sadness over it. But it would not necessarily mean that either of them made a mistake, that they failed somehow. Sometimes the best thing that can happen is to just walk away and deal with the pain until it eases.
That isn't exactly what happened, but from what Avery has told Calden, which is spectacularly little, that is all he should surmise. She perhaps does not even notice his disapproval, or read it for what it really is, but the polite -- and honestly, wise -- thing to do is to talk of that experience and that man as little as possible to the man she's currently sitting on a picnic blanket with.
Who she is talking to, finally, about Their Relationship. Or, more simply, about the fact that she intends to clarify This as something where both parties agree openly to cessation of sexual and romantic pursuits outside of their sexual and romantic pursuits with one another. Some people may just assume it goes without saying. And perhaps neither of them have been pursuing anyone or anything other than each other for several months now. It hardly matters to Avery: but it does matter that she say it clearly. That it's on the table:
I want to continue seeing you.
I will not be seeing anyone else.
I do not want you to see anyone else either.
Avery smiles at his answer -- even if he had left it at that, if he had only said I'd like that, it would be enough. "Good," she says, still smiling, only broader now. She pushes some chicken over towards the potato salad on her plate. Already Calden is making another assumption, but she's looking at her plate and he can't see in her eyes if that 'we' is true or not. And already he's asking her about logistics! Planning! Family meetings!
Her eyes come up from her plate and meet his with a wry smile. And just...pins him with it for a moment, smiling like that, before she says -- with some amusement: "How about...we finish lunch?"
Calden WhiteA huff, something like a laugh -- "Fine. Lunch, and then a three-hour planning session to determine how we can roll in the hay more often."
And he picks up his beer. Sips from it, sets it back on that low little table; picks up that plate of his.
"Are you doing anything after this?"
Avery ChaseAvery smiles as she reclines again, eating with the same appetite and forthrightness as she does so many other things. Calden suggests lunch, then a three-hour planning session so they can have sex more often. She laughs, shaking her head, taking it for the joke it almost is.
"I believe there's going to be some dancing on the deck when the sun goes down. But that will be long after they bring out the cake for Dr. Vieyra-Smith and there will be a round of birthday toasts. Someone will have to get the teenagers to stop loitering and make an appearance for that," from the sound of things, that Someone will not be Avery, "and I'm sure some time after dancing people will start to drift away."
After another bite, Avery licks her lips, breathing in: "When I saw you, one of my first thoughts was how much I was looking forward to dancing with you again." There is color in her cheeks a moment later, and a moment too late: "Though I doubt it would be very classy of us to dance as though we're at a blues club instead of an ever-so-proper garden party."
Calden WhiteThe very thought makes him smile, slow, slowly broadening. "We'll dance very discreetly," he promises, "and very classily. And I'll try not to kiss you too lustily, though I can't make that a promise."
Avery ChaseShe laughs, grinning at him. "If you should kiss me on the dancefloor, you should do so only once or twice -- three on the outside -- throughout the course of the rest of the evening. Quite chastely, and lightly, when you think no one is looking."
Calden WhiteThat brings a burst of laughter to Calden's lips. "How did you come up with such a rule?"
Avery ChaseNot quite chaste, no, but not lustily which seems to be what matters to her. She smiles as he kisses her, even though people glancing over are seeing Calden kissing her like he's a schoolboy with his first love. Her hand briefly touches his cheek, fingertips to jaw, grazing over his skin as he draws back.
"Well, I said three when we're dancing," she says, legalistically. "I suppose there's no limit until then other than good sense and decency." There's a beat of a pause. "Of which you have neither, you cad." She laughs. "I can't believe you said the word lusty. You don't get much more Fianna than that, darling."
Avery Chase[DLP!]
Avery ChaseAvery just keeps grinning at him. "It's called manners, Mr. White, which is simply the art of considering the comfort and ease of others and giving them due respect." She sips her drink, eyes twinkling. "No one here wants to see you kissing me lustily, certainly not our honored host or the guest of honor and least of all my father or brother. Goodness."
Calden WhiteIt's the goodness! that does it. That sets him over the edge, makes him lean over and kiss her again, lightly, sweetly, not quite chastely.
As he draws away, his smile simmers in his eyes. He draws his lower lip between his teeth, as though tasting her kiss anew.
"I get two more, right?"
Avery ChaseNot quite chaste, no, but not lustily which seems to be what matters to her. She smiles as he kisses her, even though people glancing over are seeing Calden kissing her like he's a schoolboy with his first love. Her hand briefly touches his cheek, fingertips to jaw, grazing over his skin as he draws back.
"Well, I said three when we're dancing," she says, legalistically. "I suppose there's no limit until then other than good sense and decency." There's a beat of a pause. "Of which you have neither, you cad." She laughs. "I can't believe you said the word lusty. You don't get much more Fianna than that, darling."
Calden White"I have plenty of good sense and decency," Calden argues,
and it should be noted that he's hardly drawn back after that kiss. He's an inch away, two on the outside, his eyes warmed by his smile, his smile just dying to turn into another kiss.
"It's just that they both seem to fly out the window when you're within a hundred yards. Though I have to point out: you're the one that convinced me to have a tryst in my truck. On a downtown street, at that." On that note he does, in fact, lean forward. Nips a little kiss onto her lips, smiling all through it; backs off just enough to put a hand on the ground and push himself up.
"Let's go dance the afternoon away, Miss Chase. And if no one's dancing yet we'll be trendsetters."
Avery ChaseAvery almost laughs in his face. He hasn't retreated, and she's trying to have her damn lunch and all he wants to do is kiss her and tell her how wonderful she is and dance. God. Men. So sentimental. So romantic.
He mentions the tryst in his truck and she blushes, looking away as though he's teasing her. Which he is. It's just that everyone for a square mile knows that. He nips her, kisses her again, and finally puts a few more inches of distance between them. Avery is still smiling, her cheeks still pink.
"It's too hot to dance," she says, a touch of languor in her voice. One can almost imagine her rolling onto her back, stretching out, but she doesn't. "Let's just... eat lunch on this blanket. And then go be polite and listen to boring stories, and I can lean against your side and confirm everyone's gossip that we're an item and start gossiping about how much younger I am instead. Then we can dance, and I'll..."
She laughs softly, lazily. "I'll let my hair down and shake it back and kiss you on the dancefloor. Over and over."
Calden WhiteOne can almost imagine --
Calden can very well imagine her rolling onto her back in that pretty little sleeveless blouse, those tailored shorts that bare a mindwarping amount of skin. Well; not really that much, not by modern-era standards -- though it could be argued Calden seems to live in a slightly more remote timeline than the rest of the world -- but enough, anyway, to spin his head around. He can, and he does, imagine her stretching her arms over her head, stretching her body over that blanket; can and does imagine kneeling down and bending over her to run the tip of his nose,
run the tip of his tongue all over her; from the corner of her mouth to those lovely nipples of hers; from those magnificent breasts down to where he could really ... just ... spend the rest of his life adoring her, licking her, making her come.
Calden blinks the thought away. Wouldn't do to spring an erection, after all. She speaks of shaking her hair back and a laugh sends a grin over his mouth: "You remembered," he says, sounding oddly pleased. And he reaches down, takes her hand,
goes to his knees after all, desire searing through him for a moment before he crosses his legs and reaches over to pick up his plate again, setting it -- perhaps just a little strategically -- over his lap.
"Come here," he says, smiling. "Come sit next to me. Eat off my plate and lean on my shoulder and tell me what brings you to this dreadfully polite little gathering."
Avery ChaseLet's be fair.
Calden is imagining her rolling onto her back, stretching out, all laid out like a banquet. He imagines unbuttoning that top and pushing his hands up under the camisole shell beneath it, pushing that up and pulling it away until he can bare her breasts and adore them with his hands and mouth. He imagines stroking her belly with his nose, tracing her navel with his tongue. He imagines dragging those shorts and her panties down her sweet, soft legs until he can open her thighs up and eat her until she's whimpering.
Perhaps it's the thought of the sound of those whimpers that makes him decide to blink away those imaginings, and perhaps it's everything that makes him put the plate over what must surely be a stirring erection.
But he's not alone. Avery has her own thoughts. She laughs at his pleased You remembered, like he didn't expect her to remember the way his eyes light up and focus so intently on her whenever she shakes her hair back. Of course she remembered. It makes him oddly, bizarrely happy and infatuated. Why would she forget that?
Avery smiles, smirking a bit, and lets him have her free hand. She even lets him direct her a bit, for he doesn't ask for anything she's opposed to. She sits up, scooting close to him, and pulls her own plate over. Maybe she won't eat off his plate, but she'll eat off her own, beside him and with him, sip her cocktail, taste his beer, rest her head on his shoulder while he finishes his potato salad.
That is no maybe. She does all those things, and tells him that she's here because her father and his family were invited the way that other parents and their families were invited, the way that Calden was invited along with his father but his father didn't want to come. Just a birthday party for an honored member of high society. Just a reason to dwell outside in summer, eat, share, dance. Avery confesses that she likes it, that she doesn't think it's dreadful at all; it isn't much of a confession as a sharing, itself: she likes parties where people just want to be comfortable and where people consider each other's comfort. She likes parties where the teenagers and children gather together and amuse themselves and the adults can just talk, and talk, and relax. She likes the food.
She mentions: she eats so much now. He probably doesn't know that she does so even in homid, because he's never seen her do so. She loves light little fusion dishes, salads, small plates, but the way she ate when she hunted, then continued eating even after she hunted. She never knew, she mentions, how hungry she could get until she started shapechanging. Then she does, in fact, eat off his plate, taking bites of the barbecue he loaded up with, stripping the rib to the bone and leaving it clean on the plate, wiping her lips with a napkin, letting him feed her a bite of his coleslaw after. She seems amused.
Some time later, she is tipping her head up, kissing him under his ear, murmuring:
"I can't wait to have your cock inside me again, Calden." Her lips press again to his skin, so lightly, so delicately. "I love the way you fill me so... completely."
Calden WhiteIt does not surprise Calden at all that she likes these things. She likes the food, she likes the company, she likes the gentility and civility and the enjoyment of summer, warmth, sunshine, life. Sometimes it amazes him a little that someone like her -- so vivacious, so scintillating -- could want sometimes to crawl under a bed. Crawl into a hole. Disappear. But then he remembers: we are not our madnesses. That is what makes them madness in the first place.
He admits, though, that he's usually bored by these things. He likes an earthier, livelier sort of gathering. And: he likes smaller, more intimate affairs too. A few close friends. A fire. A meal heavy in meats and potatoes and red, red wines.
She should come to his place sometime, he says. He'll throw a little get-together. And then they can tell everyone there, too, that they're an item. He likes that term: an item. He laughs about it. It is, like her 'goodness'es and her 'darling's,
about as Silver Fang as 'lusty' was Fianna.
--
Speaking of which.
He's watching the ranchowner's dogs -- a pair of happy-looking Australian shepherds who've never herded anything in their blessed little lives -- romping on the lawn when she leans into him. When she tips her head up, when she kisses him under his ear. That's when he tips his head for her, tilting to give her access.
Inhaling, slow and deliberately-steady, when she starts to whisper. There's a dirty, dirty word in there, and it's sheathed in such pretty suggestions that it seems all the more forbidden; desirable. He's suddenly quite ardent, as she might put it. His tongue flicks out, licks his lip, and he lets that slow breath out.
Turns his head. Catches her mouth. Kisses her gently, but slowly; not so very delicately at all.
"Hush," he whispers. "You're developing such a bad habit of arousing me in public."
Avery ChaseHe understands. Even if it doesn't always seem like it and even if he himself does not always think he understands, Calden understands: Avery loves people. She cares for her family, for pack, for tribe and sept and friendship. The madness is the reason why, sometimes, she holds herself at a distance from all these things; better to be aloof most of the time than risk rejecting them utterly and shockingly later. It's a coping mechanism, an in-between place on the road from her Self to her Sickness. Even now, look at her, sitting off to the side, retreating with just one person, just one friend.
Friend. Boyfriend. Gentleman caller. Paramour.
Lover.
There is no drama between them about their choices of parties. Avery likes what he describes. She likes this, too. She likes the idea of him throwing something at his place, and making it clear at such a place that they are together. An item. She is not worried about tribal politics of claim or ownership; they are not there yet. She may in fact have a plan for it, but she doesn't want to discuss such things with Calden. He is a man, and one she enjoys and respects and admires. He is not a resource to be traded for.
Their hands play together lightly, fingers stroking in between fingers, a simple gesture between people. The dogs are staying away from Avery, but she can watch them. She isn't. She is watching Calden watch them. He tilts his head away immediately, letting her at his throat, the side of his neck, so she can linger her lips there. She listens to his breathing change. One filthy word couched in careful, polite language that one might find on a handwritten card. She watches him lick his lips, and imagines how he's coping with only that plate to conceal what she's sure is a proud and lusty erection.
He kisses her, and she kisses him back, warm and slow. Hush, he tells her, and there is a slow spreading wicked molten smile on her lips. "Oh darling," she murmurs. "It's not a habit." But:
she withdraws a bit, smiling still, looking a bit flushed with arousal and shyness of her own. Or not shyness: propriety. Something like that. Respect for her host and the guest of honor, too. And an awareness, underlying all that, of the fact that her father is perhaps twenty yards away. "Later," she whispers.
Calden WhiteAt least it's a large plate. A nice, sturdy, heavy, real plate, because their host can afford such things; because paper plates would be so tawdry at this otherwise nice, classy affair. He has that to guard his modesty. That, and his jeans, because of course he'd wear jeans even to something like this.
And boots. Though those are off right now, along with his socks; his feet are bare, enjoying the tickle of the summer grass.
"Later," he confirms, and it is equal parts anticipation and gratitude.
A little while after, it's safe for him to move the plate aside. He leans back on his elbows, wiping his fingers on a napkin that he then covers the remains of his lunch with -- nothing but a few smears of potato salad; a few bare bones. Nearby, a group of active-minded guests are setting up a game of softball, proving that this is Colorado after all, and not some corner of the Hamptons. Calden watches them, too. For a moment, anyway. Then he turns back to Avery, his mind wandering back to more somber matters.
"What happened at the Crescent," he says, "and I promise this'll be the last time I ruin our afternoon with this sort of talk -- is there a plan of action in place? Is there anything I could do to help you?"
Avery ChaseLater. Later he'll get to pull her clothes off and revel in her skin. Later she'll get that cock she described so prettily, without devolving into pornographic language about its size, its thickness, how fucking hot it is, how fucking wet he makes her, fuck. Later they'll eat each other alive.
But not right now. Now they finish eating and drinking and he reclines. People are going to play some softball, and by 'people' we mean some of the younger guests who aren't annoyed at the thought of leaving the shade. Calden is on his elbows; Avery sits on her hip next to him, propped on one arm, her free hand lightly stroking his forearm in gentle passes.
He mentions the Crescent again, while she is watching people determining bases. There's a wistful smile on her lips that turns sad there, aching, but she shakes her head at his promise, as though it isn't necessary. Because it isn't necessary to promise not to bring it up, or apologize. This is her life. He should not be simply held in the part of it that is safest, cleanest, furthest from horror.
She watches people, and doesn't look at him, but nods. "At the last moot," she murmurs, "the elders of the Crescent didn't attend. The Great Alpha told us they would be dealt with. In that area, I think we are all simply waiting for..."
the hammer to fall
the death knell
something.
Avery takes a breath. "Others are going to investigate where Champion of Honor -- the man of your tribe -- was found and see what they can discover. Others are going to look more into the history of the sept in the city to try and understand. For my part, and the part of several others, we will stand in as Guardians of Cold Crescent in the meantime. It is still a protectorate of Gaia's chosen. It will be defended." She exhales, then turns her eyes to him.
"I don't know," she says, with a faint ache. "The idea of telling you something you could do to help terrifies me. I don't want you anywhere near this. I've heard about the place where they found Champion. I've heard of what the other Cliaths saw when the Guardians tore themselves to pieces. And then I see you in the midst of all that and I want to... scream." She closes her eyes for a moment before opening them. The color is high in her cheeks, saturated in her eyes.
"What I want to ask you to do is to stay in the north. Tend your cattle and argue with your father and let me come to you when I can. Stay as far from Cold Crescent as you possibly can. They do the most terrible things to garou, Calden. I don't --"
want to finish that sentencethat thought
-- want to think of what they would do to you
Calden White" -- come here."
She doesn't quite finish the sentence. The thought. She doesn't want to think about it; she wants to scream when she does, and her cheeks are flushed again but this time it's not that pretty pink blush that's spread again and again through her lovely skin.
"Come here," he says again, reaching his arm up to her, wrapping it around her shoulders if she does lean down to him. Wrapping it around her back, wrapping her against his body, uncaring of the weather and the heat and the fact that half a hundred guests could probably see them. His arm is strong, and his torso is solid, and he holds her against him with fierce, unflinching strength. Kisses her where he can reach her, her temple perhaps; exhales into her hair.
"Don't be afraid for me," he murmurs. "I'll be careful. I'll help however I can, but I won't place myself in the path of danger. I wish I could ask you to do the same."
Avery ChaseAvery can be quite cool. Very aloof, even with Garou who are all but pawing at her to be their alpha, be their leader, their sister, love them, lead them, protect and guide them. She holds people at arm's length. She protects her self, her heart, her family, her honor. No wonder she comes off as so much older than she is.
Avery certainly does not lean down to him, but if he sits up and wraps his arms around her, she lets him. She even curls slightly into his shoulder, exhaling against him through his shirt. "You can't," she murmurs.
They both know that's the truth.
Calden White"I know." He's a little muffled because he's speaking against her temple, her hair; because he did, in fact, sit up to wrap his arms around her. He sounds resigned; sad; a little wry. "I know I can't."
Avery ChaseThere is nothing else to feel about that: resigned, sad, wry. He knew what she was when she leapt over his truck and took down an elk because she was peckish. He's seen her stand up to the enemy and he's seen her rend those enemies to pieces, too. He has seen that throughout it all, she never thought of the danger. She never forgot her honor.
He knows.
Avery just lets him hold her, then. She exhales after a long while and draws back, her body language whispering I'm okay. I'm all right even if she doesn't say it aloud. She meets his eyes, touches his cheek, and leans over to give him a soft kiss. Smiles gently at him. Fondly.
They're an item.
--
A softball rolls their way. Avery leans past him to pick it up, smiling at the grad student jogging over in madras shorts to get it back. "Is that your subtle way of suggesting we play with you, Dylan?"
He laughs it off, taking the softball back as he lifts it up. They're welcome to join, he says. They could use more players.
Avery looks at Calden, lifting her brows. But in the end, she isn't asking. She smiles at him, then at Dylan. "I think we're going to pretend to be like everyone's parents and just relax until the sun stops beating us all to death."
Calden White"I think I'm going to have to agree on that," Calden adds, "but you're welcome to join us if you'd like."
In the end Dylan doesn't join them. He can't quite be blamed for it; no one wants to feel like the third wheel. And even though both Avery and Calden are well-mannered people, even though the two of them would certainly have made Dylan feel welcomed and included in their conversation, the fact remains:
they are an item. They are so very much an item right now, off on their own little picnic, that it would feel strange to intrude on that.
--
They lounge a while longer on the grass. Calden sinks back onto his elbows again, and then flat on his back, one forearm shielding his eyes from the brilliant sky. She'd think he was asleep if not for the faint quirk to his lips, widening and settling again as she speaks. That, and the fact that he still answers her, replies in a voice that grows more and more furred by drowsiness by the moment.
He is, in fact, on the very verge of dozing off, sprawled and relaxed and quite content with his place in the world and his place beside Avery, when a small stirring of excitement slips through the crowd to herald the arrival of the cake. And it is quite the cake, multilayered, almost a wedding cake in its complexity and beauty, and then of course all the guests are filtering slowly back from the corners of the lawn and the house and the property; coming together to pick up flutes of champagne, to fan themselves delicately in the shade of the back porch, to send up good wishes for their host's birthday.
Avery and Calden stand a little ways back in the gathered crowd. There is a tiny bubble of empty space around them, which you wouldn't even notice unless you were looking for it. They laugh when it's appropriate and they raise their glasses in a toast, but neither of them take the opportunity for a personal well-wishing. Not this time, anyway. A string quartet somewhere leads the happy birthday song, and the guests join in, and though their voices mingle and are lost in the chorus they can feel each other singing, the vibration of their voices clear through their flesh and bones.
Calden clinks his glass against Avery's before he drinks. And afterward, though it's neither his birthday nor hers, he turns to share a small, sweet kiss.
It is very nearly chaste.
--
It gets a little later, and the guests get a little more elegantly inebriated. The sun sinks into the west and it's not so dreadfully hot anymore, and pretty little strings of lights are coming on across the property. The string quartet is joined by a few other pieces, horns and brass and a drummer who was instructed not to drum too loudly, please and thank you. Now Avery and Calden are circulating, they're mingling, they're confirming rumors and deflecting nosy questions and some guests are dancing and Calden notices Avery's fingertips are tapping a rhythm against the inside of his elbow.
So he asks her to dance. And of course she agrees. And so they dance, and Avery discovers that her cowboy is capable at least of the basic dance steps; is not always so forward as he was in the blues club; does not possess two left feet. They keep it light, and they keep it charming, and they keep it quite chaste, and somewhere in the midst of it he steals one,
two,
three,
four kisses, his eyes twinkling after that last; he's nearly smirking. There's a light sheen of sweat on their skin when they stop, when they go to refresh themselves with champagne or punch, Calden tossing his glass down in a single and slightly uncouth gulp.
"We should get out of here," he suggests. "You should come home with me tonight."
Avery ChaseNaturally, the young man does not want to join the affectionate couple who apparently can't even bear to sit more than an inch apart while eating lunch. He leaves them be, and gets back to the softball game, where everyone forgets to keep score but everyone also talks about actually setting up a league and playing together which none of them will actually do.
Avery nuzzles Calden's earlobe. He ends up reclining, drowsing, and she scritches his stomach through his shirt, sipping the rest of her cocktail til its empty and then sitting with her right thigh to his right side so she can face him, smile at him when he wakes up, or at least opens his eyes. Cake. They slip their shoes back on and take care of their dishes and when everyone gathers to sing Happy Birthday and get their slice, Avery and he stay quiet for the toasts because neither of them know the recipient very well and Calden is, after all, known to be a man of few public words by his acquaintances in this crowd.
They kiss softly as candles are blown out and champagne is poured and cake is eaten. She notices the bubble of space, and it aches the way it has since she changed, but it's harder to think about, even be aware of, when Calden holds her to his side, his arm around her waist, solid and warm through the thin fabric of her shirt.
--
There is dancing. The deck is lined with soft white lights along the railings and overhead and in the very trees. The band grows by a few number and the first few songs are quick and it turns out that Avery is happy to be danced away from Calden a few times by her father or someone else, and she knows quite a few steps and he's seen this before, seen her laughing and dancing at the solstice and how unabashed she is at how she enjoys the physicality. People are surprised; no one who meets her these days thinks she's the sort to be so light, so effervescent, but even through her rage she charms them. By dancing. Talking. Smiling. Even just existing.
Most dances, however, she shares with Calden. Mostly the slow ones, which increase in number as the time ticks by and people are weary and laced with champagne and the warm contentment of a long, good day in good company. She some time ago took down her chignon, leaving her hair in long waves, the flower still tucked into her hair. She hums softly when she rests her head against his chest, as the strings drop out for a single guitar slowly strumming out an instrumental version of Crazy.
Calden nuzzles her brow, her temple, until she kisses him back. She smells like that peony, and tastes of champagne and vanilla. And they are not the only couple kissing tonight, but perhaps that -- instead of sweating or excited from a faster step, instead of grabbing a new drink -- is when he mentions to her,
that she should come home with him.
And Avery sighs, smiling up at him. It's nothing short of a happy sigh, a happy smile, and if the lights are reflecting in her eyes and making them twinkle, well. It's not her fault. She stands on her toes and kisses him, softly, her mouth resting on his lower lip for a moment. "I'd like that," she whispers, then kisses him again, smiling. "Let me just say goodbye and tell my father."
A third kiss, quick and light as the others, before she starts to slip away.
Avery Chase[For posterity! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkKr0RRgeRA
Calden WhiteSo soft, that trio of kisses. So soft and light and sweet that it makes his lips curve under hers; makes him smile into those kisses, one, two, three.
She excuses herself to bid her father farewell. She starts to slip away, but Calden is loathe to let go. He winds her gently back and he kisses her again, softly, a little more lingeringly until her hands rest on his shoulders, her forearms against his chest.
"Okay," he agrees, quietly. His arms loosen and she steps back. He slips his hands into the pockets of those worn jeans he wears so well, not because they're fashionable or because he's stylish but simply because they look so right on him.
He watches her find her father. This is the first time he's seen her father, Calden realizes, and if the gentleman looks his way he raises a hand, smiles hello. Eventually she comes back to him, and he should be a gentleman and offer his arm, but what he does is wrap his arm around her shoulders, curl her against his side.
"Ready?" he asks. Truth be told, they've quite a drive ahead of them.
Avery ChaseAs she walks away, it may occur to him how sweet she is, how romantic, how a garden party with a string quartet and flowers in her hair and dancing and starlight and champagne and slow-dancing with some tall cowboy is just so goddamn girly of a thing to love the way she loves it. It may not occur to him to recall images of rage flashing red in her eyes when snipers shot at them from above and she. Lost. Her. Mind. It may not occur to him to recall the way she changed her shape and hid under the bed, retreating into something like self-loathing or self-terror.
Then again, Calden seems to think of these things and frame them within her honor, her strength, her undeniable leadership. Her tenderness. Her reaching for him, even slowly and warily, in the midst of madness, leaning against him like a touchstone.
For her part, Avery thinks of the lovely music, the starlight, the smell of flowers and taste of champagne, and thinks of all these things warmed and roughened and made less ethereal and more real, more solid, more touchable, because Calden is there too, and because he so obviously and for so long was interested in being An Item. Because he just waited, patient without being longsuffering and silent without being sullen, for Avery to settle into it at her own pace. Because he would have been just as content, she suspects, to be a part of her life whether she ever intimated exclusivity or officiality was something she wanted. At least for a while. At least for, perhaps, a long time.
She likes him so much.
--
Across the way, she touches her father's arm and smiles at him as he turns, his bright eyes smiling even as his lips do, yes yes but he wants to introduce her to these people he's talking to, and he does, and Avery is so polite that she stays a bit to introduce herself but tells her father she has to insist, she's going to go ahead and turn in for the night, she'll see him perhaps tomorrow, or later this weekend. He glances past her at Calden, noting but not really expressing anything, waving back at him, then tips his face and she kisses his cheek and flits away somewhere else.
So there she is now, paying her respects to the hostess and to the guest of honor and wishing said guest of honor a very happy birthday and thank you so much for having her and so forth. She does catch her brother's eye at some point and waves to him, blowing a kiss that he just sort of embarrassed-wry smile-smirks at her in response with a half-wave of his own. He's not a bad kid. He's a teenager, but he's been brought up to be more mannerly, more honorable, than most.
She all but traipses back to Calden, her steps light and delighted. She has no bag but a purse slung cross her body and she wraps her arms around his middle in a squeeze as he pulls her close, arm around her. Avery glows when she smiles up at him.
"Oh, yes," she says, because yes and yes and yes. Yes.
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