This too much for you?
Who: R'en and Laelle
Where: Bowl
What: Because they didn't drive each other crazy enough already that day, after their meeting in the closet, Jen happens upon Laelle in the bowl in the middle of the night. They discuss strength and fear, sort of, and mostly just manage to make the crazy worse.
It is currently late summer. It's a clear summer day and the sky above is a canvas of pristine blue brushed with wisps of white. It's not quite hot but the sun is bright enough to give that illusion.
It's late. Very late. The blackness of summer's night hangs heavy over the sleeping weyr, thin clouds hiding the stars over head, the moons absent, the darkness encroaching close around lit entraces and tunnels standing guard over the bowl. Along on wall, where a few good-sized boulders are, those constantly used as seats during the day, there is a small orange light, no bigger than the tip of a pinky. It moves up, flares softly, then falls again.
The Weyr is a big place and people are very small when you're only looking for one of them. After checking the places he thought she'd be he gave up and turned tail to leave the tunnels and caverns, to meet the outside where the air is crisp and the stars are bright. Or not. As soon as R'en finds the sky he squints up at it, disappointed in its cloudiness. It's when he makes to turn again that he sees that little light and, curious, moves to it like a moth. Soon enough he can make out Laelle's face; he stops. "Oh. Hey."
That little orange light disappears. It just stops existing. The soft scent of clove smoke remains, though, should he have a quick nose. Laelle is silent for a long moment, sitting on the rock and peering at his shape in the darkness. Her breath is audible, a long slow draw that seems too large to be followed by something so small and simple as "Hello."
Maybe R'en recognizes it for what it is: steeling. Preparing. By now he must know that run-ins with him are exhausting. He does not put his hands into his pockets. He does not hunch his shoulders. He does look at her very directly and say, "You're right."
There's another pause. Apparently that breath was not enough. She must calculate again, choose her words, her reaction. "About what?" Laelle asks, her expression obscurred by the lack of light and her voice excrutiatingly even. But he doesn't shove his hands into his pockets and in the dark her eyes narrow at this.
"'Bout me not bein' afraid o'Derek. About what'm really afraid of." Just now, in this moment, R'en is square and sure. "You're right. 'M afraid o'me." On this acceptance he lifts his hands and lets them flop back to his sides. What now?
"You're the last thing you should be afraid of," Laelle answers, this more readily. "You're the only thing you can control." She holds him in her gaze until the tension falls from around her eyes. She wets her lips and turns her head, looking down and behind her towards crevices between stones. It's just a moment, an glance that can see nothing in the dark. Then she slips her eyes back toward him, watching.
That is something he can understand. That is something he knows. Of course, hearing these things being said in a voice that isn't the one in your head is a different experience entirely. When she drops her eyes he does too, to look at the ground, and it isn't until a few seconds into her putting her focus back on him that he looks up again. After a beat he says, simply, "Yeah."
"You're afraid to make decisions," Laelle goes on, since he has so little to add. She draws a leg beneath the other, pinned against the rock with one foot dangling. It sets her hip at a slight angle, forming a serpentine of her spine and accenting the curve of her hip. She looks away at some distant unseen point across the bowl, not at him.
Which R'en also takes. Maybe there's a part of him that feels like he deserves this mirror of himself; maybe he really wants to know what she was trying to say before. Or maybe he wants an opening. No matter what, though, he's going to remain silent.
But his silence doesn't urge any other observations for him. She's given him her impression, distilled. She draws in another breath and lets time pass before releasing it. "I'm sorry," she tells him. Perhaps Laelle is apologizing for her views, or for the situation or maybe for her previous behavior. Perhaps all three.
He isn't going to let her off that easy. "For what?" he asks her cheerfully, a smirk pulling at one corner of his mouth.
"This morning," she explains. Her attention draws back to him, taking a moment to look skeptically on what cheerfulness he wears. "I can't explain." But she tries anyway, "I frustrate you. You didn't need that." Her brows crease, her lips turn down, it is a grimace for herself, paired with the nearly impreceptable shake of her head.
The brightness fades. That isn't to say it's replaced by darkness. If anything, there's understanding where the obnoxious cheer once was. He remembers this morning - all too well - and he could have guessed that somewhere in the equation of her and him there lies frustration. Her apology though goes unaccepted. "Don't be. You do." Of all the things he would do to her if only, he wouldn't lie. "Frustrate me somethin' awful. But. It's me."
Laelle might be sad to see that brightness fade, if she'd thought it earnest. Instead she just watches as it falls away. "Well," she says, acceptance for the way things are, the nature of their frustrations. Then she goes quiet again.
Her quiet earns her a bit of a squint. It's the sort of lapse that needs filling. He fills it. "Couldn't touch you. In there."
Her head turns a little toward him, some interest drawing her more direct gaze, but Laelle quickly neutralizes it and swallows it down. "You didn't." Perhaps she misunderstands.
"I didn't," R'en agrees so easily. That's another hanging moment though. Normally he'd scuff his foot on the ground, concentrate on just his toes, but he hasn't pocketed his hands yet either. "Ain't for lack o'wantin' to."
She holds him in her steady gaze, wary of wear he's going. "I know," Laelle tells him without the arrogance that such a response might suggest. "I understand." Which is a different thing altogether.
Returning that focus just as confidently, he keeps going. "You sure?" He seems skeptical.
Laelle barely cants her head and pauses, a bare moment of consideration that never changes the mild, even expression of her face. "I believe so."
"You so sure of everything?" R'en asks next, that brightness suddenly back again in whatever light there is. He's grinning. "What else're you so sure of?"
Laelle's eyes tighten for that sudden return of light to his demeanor, a narrowing of lashes for his grin. "You're welcome to explain if you think it's necessary," she invites. To hide whatever doubt might be conveyed with such an openning, she shifts on her rock, setting a hand down beside her that juts her shoulder up and forces her side to lengthen from the waist. It is a casual position.
"Well thank you," is accompanied by a touch of his fingertips to his forehead, a salute to her of gratitude, amused and almost teasing. And since he has her permission, he'll do so, except only after taking a closer place next to her rock with his hand on it. In doing so he might be trying to touch /her/, as if the craggy thing she sits upon is an extension of herself. "After I left I talked to 'im. About what he felt while I was feelin'." Everything.
Laelle's glance falls as he nears, as his hand extends, following it to its place on the rock so near to where her own hand rests. In this drop of her gaze, the nod of her head might be lost, but it bids him to continue.
And continue he does. "And /he/ said, and he can't lie, that it didn't bother 'im. The things I was feelin'. That it confused 'im when they were happenin' but he understands. Which is odd 'cause they told us all we shouldn't do anything t'upset 'em lest they tell the whole place about it. Not that I'm complainin.'"
"The fear?" Laelle is quick, perhaps too quick, to latch onto that facet of the morning's experience. She draws herself a bit straighter, pulling some weight from her hand so that it can slide away a little, just a little. "What feeling?" But she regrets that question the moment it leaves her lips and she attempts to distract him from it. "I'm glad that he's not troubled."
Oh no, no. Distraction won't come easily, or at all. Still grinning, R'en shifts his weight to his other foot and leans on the rock. His hand doesn't follow, nor does it leave; hers retreating isn't the signal it might have been. "The feelin' like I wanna take advantage o'you puttin' your hands on me like you were."
"You asked me not to," Laelle points out, her voice dead flat, more than it should be. Though his intentions seem to be growing more and more direct, she continues to play oblivious to it.
"Did I?" He makes his eyes smaller, narrow in his questioning. "Can't recall sayin' so."
"You led me to believe it was unwelcome, then," Laelle says, an extra twitch by her eye as though she might like to make a face at him for this argument of semantics.
Semantics, sometimes, are all he has. "So you drank." Lead. Horse. Water. It's a metaphor. "You mean t'touch me like that?"
It's a metaphor that Laelle does not understand. Her eyebrows press in together and she looks at him, for a moment, like he might have started talking gibberish. As far as she's concerned, he sort of has. But that last part, that comes out in words she knows. "Like what?" She senses a trap, a web meant to fumble her, to lay out bare things meant to be covered. She pulls away, stiff and straight, using that hand to push her from the rock and onto her feet.
It is, and just because she's wary of it now doesn't mean it's foiled. "Like you were. In a way that you'd stop if you thought I didn't wanna be touched like that. Like you were forcin' somethin' on me I didn't want." She moves. He doesn't. "But then you knew /I/ wanna touch you. Where's that fit in."
Her breath comes too quickly as he words press onward. "Stop," she tells, low and quiet but no gentler for it. Her eyes are on him, warning and still. She holds her ground, at least for the moment.
Turned to face her, with his chin tipped down so he can make up for the difference in height, R'en says, very clearly, "No." And, "If I'm so afraid o'myself you're not much better. Scared even t'take somethin' you want. Or t'speak your mind. You might call it bein' secretive, I call it bein' a coward."
The warning of her gaze turns sharp and hard, her turn to press back. She leans in as her lashes draw tight, the better to glare at him with. "I call it making a decision," Laelle counters. "You might not recognize it. I know such things are foreign to you."
All of her leaning and glaring will do her no good. He answers them both with a little smile, half-formed, and mutters very darkly. "Oh, we already did me." His hand comes out a lot slower than it might have had he actually been worried she'd run. It catches around her wrist and he pulls, roughly, towards him.
Laelle doesn't like that smile; she continues to glare back at it. And so while she might not run away, she will try to coil her arm from his grasp. Only the evading jerk comes a moment too late and she is snared. Resisting his pull, she'll make him tighten his fingers on her wrist if he wants to insist, to drag her off balance and a step closer. Her eyes flare and smolder. "Jensen." It's another warning.
Well, if she's going to give him no other choice. "Laelle." And this time when he gives that other half of their usual exchange his voice is hard. Though he has her close, practically pressed up along his long body, he doesn't plan to keep her there. His other hand takes her other wrist in hand and he turns her bodily to put her up against the rock. Even when he's trying to be rough he's gentle, to a degree, and it isn't a slam at all he gives her though the unsoftness against her back might prove a discomfort, especially when he closes every bit of space between them. One of her arms is freed so he can put that hand against her chest, right over her heartbeat, and his face is close enough to hers that she can probably feel his breath on her mouth. "I thought you wanted me strong. This too much for you?" Then, softer, "What're you afraid of, Laelle?"
There is no wide spread of lashes, no surprised dismay tht registers on her face. If anything, every touch, every forceful reposition of her against him, against the rock, is met with a hardening of her glare, the stiff non-compliance of her body. She may not be able to find sure footing, but she pulls her wrists at his hard grasp. Her free hand twists to try to push at his chest, her arm pinned all but pinned between them. A curl comes to her lips. "Do you want me to be afraid?" she breathes back, quieter now, but snarled.
"No." R'en hasn't broken eye contact yet and he won't be doing so now. "I want you t'be /strong/." There's another pause here while he examines the look on her face with a sweeping of his eyes, the first breaking of focus, only seconds long. Just when it might seem like he's going to spit something else at her, more of her own words maybe, he turns his head to brush a kiss to the highest point of her cheek, the curve the bone makes, and releases her to take a step back. A little step.
She is still, a trapped and angry animal, stiff in his grasp and unyeilding. She meets his gaze with a wall of her own, a will that pushes back against him. Strong. It is well that he aims his lips for her cheek because she turns her head. And still, that contact comes as a brush has her shudder under him, against all her defiance. And then the space comes and her weight sinks down to her feet again, no longer pinned against the stone. There is no change in her eyes, the are still slitted with resistance. But though her hand might find clean purchase on his chest, it does not yet deliver the shove promised by all her wound tension.
Yeah. That's all. Or it would be if she hadn't put her hand there. He looks down at it, to her, doesn't blink. The distance he gave her is hers, he doesn't move closer again to take it away, but the hand that grabbed her wrist initially does move again except much, much slower. It goes to her cheek, the other one, without bothering along the way with her shoulder or her arm.
He goes suddenly soft and confusion starts to take the edge off of her glare, though it draws her brows deeper together. Her lashes flicker at his touch on her face, unexpected. "What are you doing?" Laelle whispers harshly, eyes sharpening to find him again, to fight the confusion. Her shoulders give a jerk, the battle of willpower manifested in her readied stiffness. Her hand starts to press, but hardly in any definitive way.
That, apparently, is way more effective than her hand's increasing pressure. What are you doing? Whatever was happening on R'en's face it wasn't soft, and it's fading fast when she asks that. Instead of answering her he drops his hand, just like that, and moves away, deepening the distance between them. Next he's turning around, away.
And with all that struggle, the last thing Laelle should do is follow, but she does. The sudden cool of air and distance rushes in around her and she steps after him, reaching for his arm, wordless.
It was early in his exit, he wasn't moving fast enough yet to be out of reach. She gets his attention with that little and he stops, makes a face she can't see - what now? - and turns a slow circle to be facing her again, his hand in his hair. With it thus tousled and his eyebrows lifted, he looks the perfect picture of 'what?'.
The glare is gone and the confusion is cooling quickly. Her hands are dropped to her sides and she looks at him. For too long. That maddening silence draws on with only the rise and fall of her chest to prove that time is passing. Finally her lips part. "I like you strong," she tells him, quietly and surely. There is no smug satisfaction, no apparent game. Except that now she's the one turning to walk away.
Maddening. And it seems like too fast, what she said, and then she's going away. Now it's his turn to reach, to stop, to chase. She doesn't get to turn very far because he has her, he's bringing her back around, too surprised by his own action at first it seems to do anything but watch himself pull her closer.
And this time she lets him. For the most part at least. She's still stiff - slender, weak muscles tight and tense as he stops her, turns her around, draws her in. She doesn't look at him now, her head and gaze angled slightly downward, but she tells him, warns him, "Don't try anything," in another whisper.
R'en doesn't try anything. After that, getting that reaction from her for what must feel like the millionth time, he wouldn't. But he does take her hand and squeeze it once and say under his breath, "Thank you."
She squeezes back; her fingers, soft and slim in his, linger after they relax. It's a small touch, but deliberate. She should probably ask why he's thanking her, how he could be grateful for any part of the torture she dishes out on him. She doesn't. "I have to go," she tells him quietly, her eyes still low, her lips still set in their natural downward curve.
"I know." She tried to leave. Of course, there isn't anything in his voice that implies 'duh'. Even so, he's the first one to let go, to turn again, to walk away. And while he does so his shoulders are slumped, his hands are in his pockets, his eyes are on the ground.
And this time Laelle doesn't try to stop him. She watches his back as he retreats, her jaws flexing tight for the slump of his shoulders. She turns, striding off for the distant lights of the Caucus area.
Where: Bowl
What: Because they didn't drive each other crazy enough already that day, after their meeting in the closet, Jen happens upon Laelle in the bowl in the middle of the night. They discuss strength and fear, sort of, and mostly just manage to make the crazy worse.
It is currently late summer. It's a clear summer day and the sky above is a canvas of pristine blue brushed with wisps of white. It's not quite hot but the sun is bright enough to give that illusion.
It's late. Very late. The blackness of summer's night hangs heavy over the sleeping weyr, thin clouds hiding the stars over head, the moons absent, the darkness encroaching close around lit entraces and tunnels standing guard over the bowl. Along on wall, where a few good-sized boulders are, those constantly used as seats during the day, there is a small orange light, no bigger than the tip of a pinky. It moves up, flares softly, then falls again.
The Weyr is a big place and people are very small when you're only looking for one of them. After checking the places he thought she'd be he gave up and turned tail to leave the tunnels and caverns, to meet the outside where the air is crisp and the stars are bright. Or not. As soon as R'en finds the sky he squints up at it, disappointed in its cloudiness. It's when he makes to turn again that he sees that little light and, curious, moves to it like a moth. Soon enough he can make out Laelle's face; he stops. "Oh. Hey."
That little orange light disappears. It just stops existing. The soft scent of clove smoke remains, though, should he have a quick nose. Laelle is silent for a long moment, sitting on the rock and peering at his shape in the darkness. Her breath is audible, a long slow draw that seems too large to be followed by something so small and simple as "Hello."
Maybe R'en recognizes it for what it is: steeling. Preparing. By now he must know that run-ins with him are exhausting. He does not put his hands into his pockets. He does not hunch his shoulders. He does look at her very directly and say, "You're right."
There's another pause. Apparently that breath was not enough. She must calculate again, choose her words, her reaction. "About what?" Laelle asks, her expression obscurred by the lack of light and her voice excrutiatingly even. But he doesn't shove his hands into his pockets and in the dark her eyes narrow at this.
"'Bout me not bein' afraid o'Derek. About what'm really afraid of." Just now, in this moment, R'en is square and sure. "You're right. 'M afraid o'me." On this acceptance he lifts his hands and lets them flop back to his sides. What now?
"You're the last thing you should be afraid of," Laelle answers, this more readily. "You're the only thing you can control." She holds him in her gaze until the tension falls from around her eyes. She wets her lips and turns her head, looking down and behind her towards crevices between stones. It's just a moment, an glance that can see nothing in the dark. Then she slips her eyes back toward him, watching.
That is something he can understand. That is something he knows. Of course, hearing these things being said in a voice that isn't the one in your head is a different experience entirely. When she drops her eyes he does too, to look at the ground, and it isn't until a few seconds into her putting her focus back on him that he looks up again. After a beat he says, simply, "Yeah."
"You're afraid to make decisions," Laelle goes on, since he has so little to add. She draws a leg beneath the other, pinned against the rock with one foot dangling. It sets her hip at a slight angle, forming a serpentine of her spine and accenting the curve of her hip. She looks away at some distant unseen point across the bowl, not at him.
Which R'en also takes. Maybe there's a part of him that feels like he deserves this mirror of himself; maybe he really wants to know what she was trying to say before. Or maybe he wants an opening. No matter what, though, he's going to remain silent.
But his silence doesn't urge any other observations for him. She's given him her impression, distilled. She draws in another breath and lets time pass before releasing it. "I'm sorry," she tells him. Perhaps Laelle is apologizing for her views, or for the situation or maybe for her previous behavior. Perhaps all three.
He isn't going to let her off that easy. "For what?" he asks her cheerfully, a smirk pulling at one corner of his mouth.
"This morning," she explains. Her attention draws back to him, taking a moment to look skeptically on what cheerfulness he wears. "I can't explain." But she tries anyway, "I frustrate you. You didn't need that." Her brows crease, her lips turn down, it is a grimace for herself, paired with the nearly impreceptable shake of her head.
The brightness fades. That isn't to say it's replaced by darkness. If anything, there's understanding where the obnoxious cheer once was. He remembers this morning - all too well - and he could have guessed that somewhere in the equation of her and him there lies frustration. Her apology though goes unaccepted. "Don't be. You do." Of all the things he would do to her if only, he wouldn't lie. "Frustrate me somethin' awful. But. It's me."
Laelle might be sad to see that brightness fade, if she'd thought it earnest. Instead she just watches as it falls away. "Well," she says, acceptance for the way things are, the nature of their frustrations. Then she goes quiet again.
Her quiet earns her a bit of a squint. It's the sort of lapse that needs filling. He fills it. "Couldn't touch you. In there."
Her head turns a little toward him, some interest drawing her more direct gaze, but Laelle quickly neutralizes it and swallows it down. "You didn't." Perhaps she misunderstands.
"I didn't," R'en agrees so easily. That's another hanging moment though. Normally he'd scuff his foot on the ground, concentrate on just his toes, but he hasn't pocketed his hands yet either. "Ain't for lack o'wantin' to."
She holds him in her steady gaze, wary of wear he's going. "I know," Laelle tells him without the arrogance that such a response might suggest. "I understand." Which is a different thing altogether.
Returning that focus just as confidently, he keeps going. "You sure?" He seems skeptical.
Laelle barely cants her head and pauses, a bare moment of consideration that never changes the mild, even expression of her face. "I believe so."
"You so sure of everything?" R'en asks next, that brightness suddenly back again in whatever light there is. He's grinning. "What else're you so sure of?"
Laelle's eyes tighten for that sudden return of light to his demeanor, a narrowing of lashes for his grin. "You're welcome to explain if you think it's necessary," she invites. To hide whatever doubt might be conveyed with such an openning, she shifts on her rock, setting a hand down beside her that juts her shoulder up and forces her side to lengthen from the waist. It is a casual position.
"Well thank you," is accompanied by a touch of his fingertips to his forehead, a salute to her of gratitude, amused and almost teasing. And since he has her permission, he'll do so, except only after taking a closer place next to her rock with his hand on it. In doing so he might be trying to touch /her/, as if the craggy thing she sits upon is an extension of herself. "After I left I talked to 'im. About what he felt while I was feelin'." Everything.
Laelle's glance falls as he nears, as his hand extends, following it to its place on the rock so near to where her own hand rests. In this drop of her gaze, the nod of her head might be lost, but it bids him to continue.
And continue he does. "And /he/ said, and he can't lie, that it didn't bother 'im. The things I was feelin'. That it confused 'im when they were happenin' but he understands. Which is odd 'cause they told us all we shouldn't do anything t'upset 'em lest they tell the whole place about it. Not that I'm complainin.'"
"The fear?" Laelle is quick, perhaps too quick, to latch onto that facet of the morning's experience. She draws herself a bit straighter, pulling some weight from her hand so that it can slide away a little, just a little. "What feeling?" But she regrets that question the moment it leaves her lips and she attempts to distract him from it. "I'm glad that he's not troubled."
Oh no, no. Distraction won't come easily, or at all. Still grinning, R'en shifts his weight to his other foot and leans on the rock. His hand doesn't follow, nor does it leave; hers retreating isn't the signal it might have been. "The feelin' like I wanna take advantage o'you puttin' your hands on me like you were."
"You asked me not to," Laelle points out, her voice dead flat, more than it should be. Though his intentions seem to be growing more and more direct, she continues to play oblivious to it.
"Did I?" He makes his eyes smaller, narrow in his questioning. "Can't recall sayin' so."
"You led me to believe it was unwelcome, then," Laelle says, an extra twitch by her eye as though she might like to make a face at him for this argument of semantics.
Semantics, sometimes, are all he has. "So you drank." Lead. Horse. Water. It's a metaphor. "You mean t'touch me like that?"
It's a metaphor that Laelle does not understand. Her eyebrows press in together and she looks at him, for a moment, like he might have started talking gibberish. As far as she's concerned, he sort of has. But that last part, that comes out in words she knows. "Like what?" She senses a trap, a web meant to fumble her, to lay out bare things meant to be covered. She pulls away, stiff and straight, using that hand to push her from the rock and onto her feet.
It is, and just because she's wary of it now doesn't mean it's foiled. "Like you were. In a way that you'd stop if you thought I didn't wanna be touched like that. Like you were forcin' somethin' on me I didn't want." She moves. He doesn't. "But then you knew /I/ wanna touch you. Where's that fit in."
Her breath comes too quickly as he words press onward. "Stop," she tells, low and quiet but no gentler for it. Her eyes are on him, warning and still. She holds her ground, at least for the moment.
Turned to face her, with his chin tipped down so he can make up for the difference in height, R'en says, very clearly, "No." And, "If I'm so afraid o'myself you're not much better. Scared even t'take somethin' you want. Or t'speak your mind. You might call it bein' secretive, I call it bein' a coward."
The warning of her gaze turns sharp and hard, her turn to press back. She leans in as her lashes draw tight, the better to glare at him with. "I call it making a decision," Laelle counters. "You might not recognize it. I know such things are foreign to you."
All of her leaning and glaring will do her no good. He answers them both with a little smile, half-formed, and mutters very darkly. "Oh, we already did me." His hand comes out a lot slower than it might have had he actually been worried she'd run. It catches around her wrist and he pulls, roughly, towards him.
Laelle doesn't like that smile; she continues to glare back at it. And so while she might not run away, she will try to coil her arm from his grasp. Only the evading jerk comes a moment too late and she is snared. Resisting his pull, she'll make him tighten his fingers on her wrist if he wants to insist, to drag her off balance and a step closer. Her eyes flare and smolder. "Jensen." It's another warning.
Well, if she's going to give him no other choice. "Laelle." And this time when he gives that other half of their usual exchange his voice is hard. Though he has her close, practically pressed up along his long body, he doesn't plan to keep her there. His other hand takes her other wrist in hand and he turns her bodily to put her up against the rock. Even when he's trying to be rough he's gentle, to a degree, and it isn't a slam at all he gives her though the unsoftness against her back might prove a discomfort, especially when he closes every bit of space between them. One of her arms is freed so he can put that hand against her chest, right over her heartbeat, and his face is close enough to hers that she can probably feel his breath on her mouth. "I thought you wanted me strong. This too much for you?" Then, softer, "What're you afraid of, Laelle?"
There is no wide spread of lashes, no surprised dismay tht registers on her face. If anything, every touch, every forceful reposition of her against him, against the rock, is met with a hardening of her glare, the stiff non-compliance of her body. She may not be able to find sure footing, but she pulls her wrists at his hard grasp. Her free hand twists to try to push at his chest, her arm pinned all but pinned between them. A curl comes to her lips. "Do you want me to be afraid?" she breathes back, quieter now, but snarled.
"No." R'en hasn't broken eye contact yet and he won't be doing so now. "I want you t'be /strong/." There's another pause here while he examines the look on her face with a sweeping of his eyes, the first breaking of focus, only seconds long. Just when it might seem like he's going to spit something else at her, more of her own words maybe, he turns his head to brush a kiss to the highest point of her cheek, the curve the bone makes, and releases her to take a step back. A little step.
She is still, a trapped and angry animal, stiff in his grasp and unyeilding. She meets his gaze with a wall of her own, a will that pushes back against him. Strong. It is well that he aims his lips for her cheek because she turns her head. And still, that contact comes as a brush has her shudder under him, against all her defiance. And then the space comes and her weight sinks down to her feet again, no longer pinned against the stone. There is no change in her eyes, the are still slitted with resistance. But though her hand might find clean purchase on his chest, it does not yet deliver the shove promised by all her wound tension.
Yeah. That's all. Or it would be if she hadn't put her hand there. He looks down at it, to her, doesn't blink. The distance he gave her is hers, he doesn't move closer again to take it away, but the hand that grabbed her wrist initially does move again except much, much slower. It goes to her cheek, the other one, without bothering along the way with her shoulder or her arm.
He goes suddenly soft and confusion starts to take the edge off of her glare, though it draws her brows deeper together. Her lashes flicker at his touch on her face, unexpected. "What are you doing?" Laelle whispers harshly, eyes sharpening to find him again, to fight the confusion. Her shoulders give a jerk, the battle of willpower manifested in her readied stiffness. Her hand starts to press, but hardly in any definitive way.
That, apparently, is way more effective than her hand's increasing pressure. What are you doing? Whatever was happening on R'en's face it wasn't soft, and it's fading fast when she asks that. Instead of answering her he drops his hand, just like that, and moves away, deepening the distance between them. Next he's turning around, away.
And with all that struggle, the last thing Laelle should do is follow, but she does. The sudden cool of air and distance rushes in around her and she steps after him, reaching for his arm, wordless.
It was early in his exit, he wasn't moving fast enough yet to be out of reach. She gets his attention with that little and he stops, makes a face she can't see - what now? - and turns a slow circle to be facing her again, his hand in his hair. With it thus tousled and his eyebrows lifted, he looks the perfect picture of 'what?'.
The glare is gone and the confusion is cooling quickly. Her hands are dropped to her sides and she looks at him. For too long. That maddening silence draws on with only the rise and fall of her chest to prove that time is passing. Finally her lips part. "I like you strong," she tells him, quietly and surely. There is no smug satisfaction, no apparent game. Except that now she's the one turning to walk away.
Maddening. And it seems like too fast, what she said, and then she's going away. Now it's his turn to reach, to stop, to chase. She doesn't get to turn very far because he has her, he's bringing her back around, too surprised by his own action at first it seems to do anything but watch himself pull her closer.
And this time she lets him. For the most part at least. She's still stiff - slender, weak muscles tight and tense as he stops her, turns her around, draws her in. She doesn't look at him now, her head and gaze angled slightly downward, but she tells him, warns him, "Don't try anything," in another whisper.
R'en doesn't try anything. After that, getting that reaction from her for what must feel like the millionth time, he wouldn't. But he does take her hand and squeeze it once and say under his breath, "Thank you."
She squeezes back; her fingers, soft and slim in his, linger after they relax. It's a small touch, but deliberate. She should probably ask why he's thanking her, how he could be grateful for any part of the torture she dishes out on him. She doesn't. "I have to go," she tells him quietly, her eyes still low, her lips still set in their natural downward curve.
"I know." She tried to leave. Of course, there isn't anything in his voice that implies 'duh'. Even so, he's the first one to let go, to turn again, to walk away. And while he does so his shoulders are slumped, his hands are in his pockets, his eyes are on the ground.
And this time Laelle doesn't try to stop him. She watches his back as he retreats, her jaws flexing tight for the slump of his shoulders. She turns, striding off for the distant lights of the Caucus area.