Like Drowning
Title: Like Drowning
Author: girlpire
Rating: NC17 or adult or FRAO, depending on who you are and whether or not you'll sue me.
Pairing: Angel/Kate
Disclaimer: This story is based on the "Angel" series, with which I am not affiliated in any way. Joss Whedon is my master, etc.
Distribution: Please no. kthnxbye. :)
Summary: Post-NFA. Kate and Angel run into each other while tracking the same demon.
Warnings: Big sweaty sex. Myriad runon sentences. Gratuitous use of the word myriad.
Author's Notes: This is my first Kate story. The plot was inspired by another now-defunct WB series, but if you don't know which one, them I'm not telling. :)
ETA: There's a prequel to this story [ here], but you don't have to read it to understand this one.
*
lovely banner by tamibrandt for a manip challenge at darker_spike
*
Like Drowning
*
She’s working a case in Chicago when she meets Angel again. It’s been years since she last saw him, since that day she nearly killed herself and somehow magically he was able to help her by dragging her into the shower and turning on the cold water, and she was so embarrassed that by the next week she had packed up and headed out. Seven years, she thinks, or maybe more, but she hasn’t really been keeping track, because even though she’s gotten her life back together the days still run into each other, and at first she wonders how it can have been this long, and then she wonders if it has really been that long at all because he looks exactly the same.
They’re in a private workout facility, part of a chain owned by the same people who make those shoes that are supposed to help you run faster or jump higher, and she’s thinking about how all these places look exactly the same, and then she sees him staring at her from across the Olympic-sized swimming pool, and she tries to draw a connection between all the gyms looking the same and Angel still looking the same, but she can’t really think how that’s connected. It’s night and it’s dark and there’s no one else here, and the pool is giving off some kind of bluish green light, and there are shadows and reflections waving slowly on the wall and she moves slowly, walking around the pool toward the vampire, and he doesn’t move, just standing there looking at her, kind of like he’s surprised to see her but also kind of like he was expecting her.
“Angel,” she says when she gets near enough, and it strikes her as sort of funny that she’s just said his entire name.
“Kate,” he says back. Up close she notices that maybe he does look a little different, a little thinner, or harder, or tireder than he used to, but he still looks very young, and she remembers seeing him that first time, at that club called D’oblique where they almost made a connection. When he told her he was a veterinarian.
He looks a little wary of her, and she realizes that she’s still holding her gun up in front of her chest like at any moment she’s going to shoot him, which wouldn’t kill him or even slow him down really, but she slowly holsters the weapon as a sign of good will, and his shoulders relax a little bit underneath his dark coat.
“What are you doing here?” she asks him. Her voice comes out more aggressive than she means it.
He gestures to the pool. “Thought I’d go for a swim,” he says lightly. He’s still guarded, not taking his eyes off her, like maybe she’ll attack him if he glances away.
“At two in the morning, in a private gym,” she says.
He smiles a little ruefully. “I’m not really a day person,” he reminds her. “Why are you here?”
She thinks about lying, but doesn’t. “A case,” she says.
He raises his eyebrows. “I thought you were done being a cop.”
At first she’s startled, because it’s been so long since she’s been a cop that she almost doesn’t remember it, but then it occurs to her that of course he wouldn’t know what she’s doing now because why would he? It’s not like he’s been keeping up with her over the years. That’s what it’s like when you’re some kind of champion, she thinks, when you save so many lives you don’t have time to bother with them after the job is done.
“P.I.,” she tells him, “but try to keep it quiet. I’m not exactly legit.” And he seems amused by this, so she tries to think of something else to say that will indicate that she’s not actually trying to be like him, even though she admires him, that the job just sort of fell into her lap because of the things that she knows, and because Chicago has a large population of creatures like him that she gets a thrill out of killing - not because they are like him but because they are like the ones who killed her father - but she can’t say all of that, so she just lets it drop. Let him think what he wants.
“What are you tracking?” he asks her, and it’s still weird after all this time that it’s what and not who.
She’s never been big with the sharing of information, so she doesn’t answer, and immediately asks him, “What are you tracking?” because of course he didn’t really break in here in the middle of the night to swim. Probably.
His eyes dart over to the pool a fraction of a second before she hears something like a roaring splash, and she’s suddenly soaked like someone’s pouring water over her head, and she sputters and takes a step back but it keeps pouring, and she can’t get away from it or open her eyes. Water starts swirling around her body and forcing in through her nose and mouth, and she coughs and swallows and flails her arms and falls down and tries to roll away from the water, but it’s stuck to her and she can’t. She’s going to drown.
She distantly hears the sound of breaking glass, and then suddenly instead of water, there’s a solid body with arms wrapped around her, but then it jumps up and dives into the pool and disappears, and she’s lying there coughing and breathing, and Angel offers her a hand and she takes it and lets him pull her to her feet.
“That’s what I’m tracking,” he tells her. He’s holding a fire extinguisher.
“Me too,” she says raggedly. “I think.”
“Your gun probably won’t work on him,” he points out, and she realizes that she’s holding it again, must have grabbed it as she rolled, used to having it in her hand when she needs protection. These days she also carries a stake tucked into her back pocket, but she still always grabs the gun first.
“Yeah, and what do you think that will do to him?” she asks irritably, holstering her weapon a second time and nodding at the fire extinguisher. The inside of her nose burns like she breathed in water, and it makes her almost-sneeze twice before he answers her.
“It cools him down, makes him solid again,” he explains. He starts to tell her something about the temperature of molecules and different phases of matter, but his voice kind of trails off and he looks a little bit confused, and she’s probably also looking confused, like a confused drowned rat, and he adds, “Jacob could explain it better,” and she doesn’t know who he means, but she’s sure that he’s right.
At that moment, the thing rises out of the water again and goes for Angel this time, swirling around him and covering his face, and he drops the fire extinguisher, which rolls away. He falls to his knees struggling, and Kate lunges for the small red canister, grabs it and drops her gun, which was suddenly in her hand again, before spraying the cold foamy mist in the direction of the wet vampire.
The water becomes solid, is a man-shaped demon struggling to hold onto Angel for a few seconds before diving back into the pool and disappearing. Angel is kneeling on the ground, still choking a little. Kate goes to him, but as soon as she reaches his side, the water is shooting towards them again, a long arm grabbing at them from the swimming pool, and Angel snatches the fire extinguisher from Kate and aims it at the stream, but nothing comes out. He rolls his eyes like the fact that it's empty is merely annoying and not life-threatening, but he quickly tosses it aside and grabs her by the hand instead, and he takes off running, practically dragging her along behind him.
A few seconds later, they’ve dead-ended in a tiny wooden room, a sauna, and Angel’s slamming the door closed and turning up the temperature as high as it will go. Water’s seeping in beneath the door, but as the room begins to heat up, the water starts turning into steam, and soon it stops coming in, but the water monster is still there, just beyond the door; they can hear him sloshing around. Waiting.
She wonders, now what? But Angel sits down on a bench and seems immediately lost in thought, so she sits down on the other bench facing him and tries to think of a way they can get out without dying. Pretty soon her wet clothes become a hot wet, so she peels off her jacket and they just sit there that way, not saying anything.
Then Angel’s cell phone rings.
She listens to him talk to the man who is apparently Jacob. Angel talks a little too loud, the way people do on cell phones, and she can hear Jacob on the other end replying in a accent that is probably English but could be Australian if you squint, promising that help is on the way and that they should just stay put, to which Angel responds that they aren’t going anywhere.
When he hangs up, he glances at her and starts to tell her what Jacob said, but she heard him and says so. So they continue to sit.
She wants to say something, make some small talk, but she can’t think of anything to say. He’s offering nothing in the way of communication, just leaning back against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes closed. He’s not breathing and it fascinates her for all of two seconds before she realizes that it would be impossible for him to drown. “You could go out there,” she says. It comes off rather accusing, but the water monster thing has made her angry, and she wants it to be dead already.
“I could,” he says without opening his eyes, and they sit there for a few more seconds before she gets that he’s not going to say anything else about it. And really, even if he did go out there, what could he possibly do to the thing except stand there and let it try to drown him? He wouldn’t die, but he couldn’t fight it, not without making it solid, and there’s no point sending him out if he can't fight. He glances at her and then away again. “I don’t really like water,” he adds.
“I don’t like water when it tries to kill me,” she says, and she sort of wishes she could say something that doesn’t sound sarcastic or aggressive or harsh, but she hasn’t seen him in seven years and has absolutely nothing to say to him except things that have to do with this case, and cases like this tend to put her in a bad mood, even though she feels pretty good about herself afterward.
It just gets hotter in the room. She feels sticky and gross, and she wants to peel off the rest of her clothes so she doesn’t have to wear the heavy wet things against her skin, but she doesn’t want to strip down in front of Angel, so she just sits there. After a few minutes, she tries to make some small talk, and he seems agreeable enough, but the conversation eventually dies away because neither of them is willing to get very personal, and the last few years don’t seem important enough to talk about anyway. The room practically has to stretch itself to accommodate their awkward silence.
She feels sweat beading at her temples, at her neck. She lifts up her hair and piles it on her head, wondering how he can just sit there in his big soggy coat and not seem to notice the heat. After a while, though, he shrugs out of the coat and leaves it in a dark, wet pile on the bench beside him. He is wearing a black button-up shirt underneath, but he leaves that on. Moments later she toes off her shoes and peels the socks from her feet, drops them on the floor.
“Hot in here,” she mutters, rolling up the bottom of her jeans. She shortens them as high as they'll go and he tilts his head in acknowledgement, although he doesn't seem bothered by it. She realizes that she never really thinks about vampires. She kills them on a pretty regular basis, but she forgets sometimes how they are, what's special about them. She thinks of them like animals, like dogs, and it never really occurs to her to think about their body temperature, or lack thereof, and how it would come in handy sometimes. She looks at the vampire just sitting there, being not hot, and remembers the time that he bit her.
That's something she does think about once in a while.
Just last weekend, she was attacked by a vampire at the park - she goes out some nights, a smallish blonde woman alone in the dark, ready for them - and in the middle of fighting this random vamp beside a picnic table, she just for one moment thought about the bite, and how she could briefly let the guy get the upper hand if she wanted to, just long enough to sink his fangs in and then easily dust him afterwards, but she didn't do it. Not chicken, but a little worried about what it would mean if she admitted that she sometimes thought about letting it happen. She wasn't crazy, she knew, but it felt a little crazy to want it, especially when it hadn't even felt good the first time. People get these romantic ideas about vampire bites, but really it just fucking hurts.
Sometimes her scar tingles a little bit when there's a vampire around. Now and then she feels like one of them is going to notice, like they're going to realize she's been bitten before and she sort of wants it again, but only because she thinks she might deserve it, deserve to be punished. And then they're going to kill her the same way they killed her father, and on some level to someone it will feel like some kind of cosmic balance, some kind of perfect circle, but really it won't even be that big a deal. Not like anyone would miss her.
She suddenly notices that she's touching the scar, rubbing her fingertips lightly over it on her neck, and he's not really but sort of watching her do it, and she moves her hand away because she doesn't want him thinking she's thinking about him or anything, even though she sort of is. It's so hot in the room that she feels like she can't breathe, and there's sweat trickling down between her breasts, and once she shoved a two by four through this man's chest, and does he even remember that?
She wanted him, back when she sort of knew him. She figures he had to have known, and that's kind of embarrassing when she thinks about it.
"They need to put a fan in here or something," she comments out of nowhere, just so it won't be so completely silent around them.
"I think that would defeat the purpose," he says. He's right of course, but it feels like they should have one for emergencies or something. For when people get trapped in here by water demons. Then he adds, "I can turn around, if you want."
At first she doesn't know what he's talking about, but then it dawns on her that he's inviting her to take her clothes off, and he's going to be a gentleman and not look. "No, I'm alright," she says quickly, and the fact that he looks kind of skeptical makes her wonder if it's possible to look worse than she does right now, after having been nearly drowned and then cooked alive. Her shirt is sticking to her back. "How long before your friend gets here with the cavalry? He is bringing cavalry, right?"
"He's bringing backup. Probably not with horses, though." He looks at his watch. "Shouldn't be too long. Twenty minutes, maybe." Then his cell rings again, and she listens to Jacob telling him about complications and delays, and when he hangs up he amends his estimation with, "Could take a little longer than twenty minutes."
She nods slowly. She's burning up, and her mouth feels dry, and she wonders how long it takes for a person to die of heat stroke, and the fact that she wonders that makes her mad because they haven't even really been here that long, and she's been in uncomfortable situations before so it's not like she can't handle it. The heat would be bearable if she could just take her clothes off. She looks at him, and he's sitting there in his long-sleeved shirt, which is a little damp from the water demon, and he's in absolutely no danger of having a heat stroke and she's terribly jealous, which also makes her mad. "You're not hot?" she asks him, just to be saying something because she can't stand sitting here and just sweating.
"It's a little warm in here," he concedes, and he starts to unbutton his shirt, but she can't tell if it's because he's hot or if he's just doing it to make her more comfortable because looking at him wearing that shirt makes the room feel hotter. He gets it unbuttoned all the way, but he doesn't take it off.
"A little warm," she repeats with a huff, and he kind of but not really smiles, which gives her the impression that he's enjoying some part of this, whether it's the fact of her melting or if it's because at least he's not trapped in here alone.
"It's not really the same for me," he says, by way of explanation. "I actually kind of like the heat."
She scowls at him, and he looks away, doing that not-really-a-smile thing again, and five minutes later she feels like maybe she'll pass out because her clothes are just getting heavier and wetter, and finally, she tells him, "Turn around." So he does.
She pulls her damp shirt off over her head, immediately feeling a bit better for lack of it, and stands up to push her jeans down, feeling them peel slowly off the backs of her thighs. She piles her clothes on top of her jacket on the bench, and she's wearing a black bra and lavender panties, and she's a little self-conscious because they don't match but it's not like she'd known she was going to be getting undressed where someone could see her. Except that he can't see her because he's being all polite facing the other direction. Which is stupid if you think about it, because they're going to be trapped together in this wooden box for God knows how long, and now they can't even look at each other.
She sits back down on the bench and pulls her hair up on top of her head again, holding it off of her neck. A bead of sweat rolls down the small of her back, and she closes her eyes, tries to think cold thoughts. She listens for the water demon and can still hear him sloshing outside the door, and it's just her luck, she thinks, that this would be one of those persistent demons that trees its victims and then waits around. She almost considers stepping out for a moment to let it wrap its cool arms around her, but there's no way to make it solid again to keep it from drowning her, and she feels sure she read somewhere that vampires can't do CPR, so she just sits there and lets the backs of her knees sweat and feels the slide of the wet bench beneath her ass whenever she shifts her weight.
Angel's sitting on the other bench turned kind of sideways with his head turned a little further away from her and probably his eyes closed too, although she can't tell. The room seems smaller than it did a few minutes ago; he seems closer. He slowly leans to the side and rests his head against the wall, and his shoulders slump like he's tired of waiting for Jacob to arrive, or just tired in general, and she tries to imagine slumping comfortably against the wall, fully clothed with even her shoes on, in this place. Just thinking about it makes her sweat more.
"You're not even sweating," she murmurs, mostly to herself because she doesn't really expect him to respond. From the back, he looks as though he might say something, but then he doesn't. "Don't vampires sweat?" she asks him.
"Sometimes," he says quietly. "But typically from exertion, not heat."
"So you're more likely to break a sweat from thumb wrestling than sitting in an oven."
"I'm more likely to burst into flames if I sit in an oven," he points out, face turned to the wall. "But I have to say, I've never broken a sweat from thumb wrestling."
"Is that because you're good at it, or because you don't play?" she asks.
"Both," he tells her.
"Then I declare a thumb war," she immediately responds.
For a few seconds, he doesn't say anything, but then he sort of sighs and holds out his hand in her direction, still not looking at her, and it almost makes her laugh because he's seriously going to thumb wrestle her in a tiny sauna three feet away from a water demon just because she suggested it. So she's looking at his hand there in the air in front of her and she figures what the hell, and she takes it in hers in the traditional thumb wrestling grip.
They say it together: "One, two, three, four, I declare a thumb war," and then the fight is on.
She expects it to be an easy victory because he isn't looking, but as soon her hand is in his, all she can think about is how much cooler his skin is than hers, and how she should have wiped her hand on something first because her palm is kind of sweaty and his is dry, and wow, he's got really big hands. After several seconds of letting her think she was going to win, he pins her thumb under his and quietly counts to three before letting it up.
"That wasn't fair," she says, but when he wants to know why, she can't think of an answer. "Your hand is bigger than mine," she finally tells him.
"I can't really do anything about that," he says to the wall, and after a pause he asks her, "Do you want to go again?"
She looks down and realizes that she's still holding his hand, but she's holding it differently now, like the way you would shake hands with someone, and the reason she's holding it that way is she likes the way it feels to have his hand in hers, because it's so cool against her that it feels like he's sapping the heat right out of her skin. "Uh, yeah," she says, and she feels stupid when she loses to him again because he can't even see the match.
"You're cheating," she accuses.
"No I'm not."
"You're using your superpowers."
"My super thumb wrestling powers?"
They play again, and this time she wins. "You just let me win."
"Maybe." He sounds like he's smiling, but he's still got his face turned away so she can't tell.
"One more time," she challenges.
The next match goes on for a while. She's sitting on the edge of the bench and actually concentrating on winning, and his thumb is moving around, toying with her, and her hand is sweaty and his skin is cool, but she knows she's going to win this time, and then finally she does.
She's smiling really big when she looks up from their hands and catches him watching her. It's just for a split second, and then he turns away again fast.
She's a little caught off guard, but she ignores that and exclaims, "You cheater!"
"I really don't think it's possible to cheat at this game," he tells her.
"You were looking."
"So were you."
"Yes, but I don't have any supernatural advantages."
"Well, if it makes you feel better, I wasn't looking at your thumb."
She almost accuses him of lying, but then she thinks about it and decides that he probably wasn't looking at the game because he would have won if he had been, which, oh God, means that he had been looking at her body in all its nearly-naked sweatiness while she was distracted by his hand.
"Sneaky bastard," she mutters, and she's still got his hand, only she's holding it the other way again, and his thumb is moving back and forth a little bit against her and she's noticing how much cooler her hand feels now than the rest of her body does, just because they've been touching. More sweat trickles down her back, and she leans forward and presses the back of his hand to her cheek to see how it feels, and there's probably not such a huge difference in their body temperatures right now, but damn it feels good for him to touch her face. She thinks she ought to explain why she's suddenly leaning into his hand, so she says, "You feel really good," which sounds more like she's coming onto him than she means for it to, but it's the truth so she doesn't try to explain further.
"So do you," he says softly, and she doesn't know if he means it or if he's just trying to return the compliment, but she figures he probably means it because she doesn't remember him saying things that weren't true back when she used to know him in L.A. She sits there with his hand to her face, and she closes her eyes and concentrates on her hand and her cheek, which are the two parts of her body that are tolerable right now, while everything else feels like it's going to burn away.
After a few moments, he takes his hand back from her, and she wants to stop him but she doesn't know how, so she just lets his hand go, and when she opens her eyes, he's looking at her, and she doesn't want him to be looking at her because she's thinking about his whole body being pressed against her whole body, and it kind of feels like he's going to realize that's what she's thinking about if he looks at her. And then he shrugs out of his shirt.
She looks at his chest and shoulders and arms and stomach, and she swallows, and her mouth is too dry, and then he takes her hand again. He's sitting on his bench across from her and he tugs her arm lightly like he wants her to stand up, so she does, and a bead of sweat rolls down the back of her thigh. "Come here," he murmurs, and he's still tugging her forward, so she takes a step toward him, and then he puts his other hand on her thigh and guides her knee up to rest on the bench beside his leg, and where he's touching her thigh feels really good, like he's stealing the heat out of it.
He moves both of his hands to her waist, and her hands automatically go to his shoulders, and he's not exactly pulling her anymore, but she understands what he's doing, so she puts her other knee on the bench beside his other leg, and she slowly sits down on his lap until her lavender panties are resting against his black pants, and the heat between them is so stifling that she has to take really shallow breaths.
Then he pulls her close. Her chest squishes against his chest as she wraps her arms around his shoulders, and holy shit, it feels so good to be touching him like this. And because she's still feeling a little awkward and can't stop herself, she tells him so. He doesn't say anything, but he breathes a little "Mmm" which sounds kind of like an agreement, and they sit there that way with their arms around each other, and even though he's stealing her heat, his coolness doesn't feel like it's going away.
She leans her cheek softly against his to feel that coolness on her face again. She closes her eyes and enjoys it, and then one of his arms lifts from her back with a little sticky sound, and he's gathering up her hair and holding it on top of her head so it won't be on her neck. And just as she's thinking how nice that is of him, he blows softly across her neck, across her scar, and it sends cold tingles down her whole body, and she comes this close to moaning out loud.
"That feels nice," she manages, her lips close to his ear. She thinks she hears an answering sigh, or maybe a chuckle, or something that makes his chest vibrate very slightly for a moment. He keeps his hand in her hair, and his other hand moves in slow, slick circles against her back, his fingertips just brushing against the bottom part of her bra and then the top edge of her panties, helping cool her body. She thinks about his hand sliding down underneath her panties, and she feels her cheeks flush hotter, if that's possible, and he blows softly against her neck again, making her shiver.
"God," she whispers, and she tightens her arms around him and shifts forward in his lap, pushing her stomach against his stomach as much as she can, and he definitely makes a sound then, almost a grunt, and his chest does that slightly vibratey thing again, which she's never felt before. Her nipples are tightening in her bra, and she wants to feel them pressed against his skin, but she doesn't want him to think she's some kind of slut, so she doesn't unhook it like she wants to. Anyway, this isn't a sexual thing; he's just cooling her down because he can and he's a nice guy, and just a couple minutes ago they were thumb wrestling for Christ's sake.
Her mind keeps flitting to sex and then away again.
His hand goes on rubbing her back, and she swallows and thinks about feeling him inside her. After a while, she can hardly take the wanting it anymore, and she leans back to look at his face, and he looks back at her face with his eyes, and she wants to ask him if he wants to have sex, but she doesn't want to say Do you want to have sex?, she wants to say something really sexy that will make him want it without having to say it, but she hasn't done this for a while so she doesn't really know what the thing to say is.
His eyes move from her eyes to her mouth and back a couple of times, and he looks kind of lost for a moment, like he's not sure what to do next, and she has this ridiculous thought that maybe it's been a long time since he's been with someone too, but that can't be true because look at him. He takes a deep breath and says, "Kate, I..." but she doesn't let him finish. She leans close to his ear and whispers, "Please," and she bites his earlobe and shifts on his lap, and his protest falls away like a solid thing.
She kisses the side of his neck and starts making little rocking motions in his lap, and he lets her hair fall down and sweep across her shoulders as his large hands fold around the flare of her hips, and he grinds up against the crotch of her lavender panties, making that little rumbley sound in his chest. She still wants to feel her breasts against his skin, so she reaches back and quickly unhooks her bra, slides it off her shoulders and pulls it out from between their bodies. She tosses it carelessly on the floor of the sauna and presses against him again, her pebbled nipples sliding across his chest on sweat. Her breath catches in her throat as they stiffen even more from the cool of his body.
Now he's got one hand on her hip and one pressed against the small of her back, holding her to him and still making slow grinding motions against her, which feels pretty amazing even though neither one of them is fully naked yet. He presses his face to the side of her neck and sighs deeply, then starts kissing and licking at her scar, the one that he gave her more than seven years ago, and it's tingling like crazy, which makes her wonder if there's something mystical about it or if he's just making her feel that way because of what he's doing. He closes his teeth around the same place and tugs gently at her skin. She breathes out his name. He rumbles.
Her body is a confusion of hot and cool, every inch of it either on fire or on Angel. She wants him to be touching her everywhere, partly to take away the heat but mostly because damn, and even though they're moving and grinding against each other it's not enough, so she whispers, "Touch me," and he must get what she means because he trails one cool hand down her hot back and slides it into her panties.
God, it's been way, way too long since a man has... since a man, she thinks, pushing back against his hand, and that's the only thought that she can make herself have, because everything else is completely obscured by heat and want and sweat and Angel's fingers. He's rubbing and squeezing the swell of her ass right where it meets her thighs, and then he moves his other hand down in her panties to slide his fingers along her damp slit and find her clit. He starts rubbing circles around and over it and she shudders and bites her lip and grinds against his hand and dies a little bit because it feels so good, and then she buries her face in his neck and sucks on a spot he seems to respond really well to, judging from the tiny sound he makes in his throat.
He's touching her, and she's feeling these little shocky tingles like electric current shooting from his fingertips to some place deep inside her body, and she's grinding around and panting and squeezing her eyes shut and fuck, and while he's touching her with his cool, cool hands against her heat, she works one of her hands down in between their bodies to fumble at the button on his pants. Just as she gets it undone, his thumb slides slickly inside her and her breath hitches around a quiet curse. He huffs a soft chuckle and she can feel his almost-smile against her neck, and when he starts moving his hand again she forgets for a moment what she's trying to do.
"Angel... fuck..." she breathes, and she closes her eyes and just enjoys his hands, slowly squirming on his lap while his chest does that tiny quiet vibrate thing, and she thinks, there's no way this guy is dead. No fucking way.
"Do you like this?" he whispers, and at the sound of his voice she clenches around his thumb, her clit humming beneath his fingers. God, it's been so long and she's so ready and she's going to come soon and damn, the man has skills. She sighs out a yes and the hand that's still on his shoulder digs fingernails into his smooth skin, and her head falls forward onto his other shoulder, and she arches back against his hand and her whole body tightens and she squeezes her eyes shut and concentrates on feeling him move.
Her mouth drops open and she cries out when she comes, and her hips try to buck jerkily, but he holds her still on his lap and draws out her orgasm with talented fingers.
She's breathing hard and riding the aftershocks when she realizes fuzzily that she's got one hand between them just lying there. He's still working his soaked hand against her slowly and she pulls her head up from his shoulder to kiss him deeply on the mouth, her whole self feeling loose and kind of limp. He's very proactive with the kiss and their lips and tongues move together for several long moments before she finally pulls away to look down at her hand where it rests near his zipper, and he looks down at her hand too.
"We don't have to..." he starts quietly, but she's already unzipping his pants and reaching inside for his cock. She gets it out and it's curving up from his lap all thick and hard, and she's grasping it in her thin fingers and all she can say is, "God, yes we do, we so have to," and his small sigh as she touches him sounds very much like relief.
She carefully raises up on sweaty knees on the bench, his hands sliding gently out of her panties, but rather than standing to pull them off, she just reaches down and moves the damp scrap of lavender to one side. She uses her other hand to guide his dick to her body, running the head back and forth slowly along her slit, slicking it with the evidence of her orgasm. It's so cool against her that it's almost a shock at first. She looks at Angel and he's watching what she's doing with this mesmerized look, his hands resting on her spread thighs, and he's so into her that it makes her hot even though she knows already that this is just one of those things that happens when two people get trapped in a sauna, that it doesn't really mean anything. And with that thought in her head, she sinks down very slowly, his cool cock pushing into her heat and dragging along her sensitive clit, and they both gasp out loud.
"God, Kate..." he breathes softly, his big hands gliding up her thighs, settling on her hips. She doesn't say anything but wraps her arms around his shoulders again, leans into his body and pulls him flush against her hot skin, presses her warm lips to his neck. Sweat trickles down between her breasts as she lets herself adjust where she's taken him in, and he feels so good against her and inside her, his body regulating her heat like it's what he was made for, and his hands caress up and down her back a few times while she settles.
"Okay?" he whispers, and she moans her quiet assent against his neck before bracing her trembling knees on the bench and pushing herself up again. He inhales sharply and slides his hands down to cup her ass, fingertips digging briefly into her flesh. She pauses for a moment and then slides slowly back down, her breasts moving slickly over his chest, and his eyes flutter closed and she can feel him swallow.
When she shifts up again, he's supporting most of her weight with his hands below her ass to help her move, and it almost feels like floating, buoyed on something cool and firm and rumbley. She's feeling lightheaded from the heat and as she starts to move up and down she begins taking rapid shallow breaths, and she thinks she might pass out, but she doesn't want to stop because nothing has felt this good in such a long time, and Angel's making tiny little gasping noises that are so fucking sexy that she just has to kiss him.
Their mouths and chests and other parts are all smashed together and sliding against each other and she can't get her breath, and the wet cool friction all over her body is like swimming or drowning and fucking at the same time. She's rolling her hips and grinding on the down stroke and digging her fingernails hard into Angel's back, and he makes a sound that sounds like "mmph" into her mouth and his vibrating rumble gets louder, loud and then soft and then loud again like some kind of machine.
"Fuck," she gasps, turning her head to the side to try to catch her breath. She doesn't stop moving though, up and down, her most sensitive parts somehow receiving the most attention as Angel lifts her and then moves her back to his lap over and over. Her hair is sticking to her neck and she feels his breath puffing against her shoulder as he presses his lips to her sweaty skin and now he's sweating too; the hair at the back of his neck is damp when she pushes her fingers through it. Exertion, she thinks. But his whole body is still cool.
"You feel so good," he half whispers half groans, and she echoes into his ear, "So good..." in a moan that tastes hot and tastes like Angel and like the ocean. Her knees slide wider apart on the bench and now he's lifting her up and down in shorter strokes, fast and hard and with every bounce her clit is grinding against him and she can't breathe and she can feel herself building up to another release, and she's clenching at him with everything she's got.
"Almost..." The word slips out on a shallow breath that barely has her voice in it at all and he's not just moving her over his body anymore; he's meeting her halfway with his own thrusts as his shoulders brace against the wall behind him, trapping her hands although she doesn't really notice. She's so close she almost already feels her orgasm before it has even come, and she's already spasming and fluttering around his cock while it's building up and she can't stop herself, and she mentally prepares herself to black out because she knows when this hits her it's going to be too good to be awake through it. "Fuck me..." she whispers while she can still make her mouth form words, and he does.
When she comes this time, it's like she's suddenly gone deaf, and everything is happening in slow motion. She sees Angel's face, and he's got his lips parted and his eyes screwed shut like he's in a lot of pain, and she feels him thrusting in and out of her and she knows on some level that he's moving really fast, but she's seeing him like he's underwater, and she's feeling her orgasm like it's this huge wave crashing against all sides of a tiny boat at the same time, and she's the boat, and she's being tossed from side to side and pulled under, and she floats back up and breaches the surface just in time to be hit with another wave and go under again.
She can't breathe. She thinks she might be making sounds with her mouth.
Angel comes inside her with another wave, and his cum is cooler in her belly than his skin is against her skin, and she doesn't know if it's because she's hotter inside or because he's colder inside, but it doesn't really matter because it feels good. She's still coming even after he's finished, but it's those little peaks that have to stutter away on their own, and her whole body is trembling as he finally lets her still in his lap and leans forward to kiss her lips. Time is a little slow getting back to normal.
She barely has the energy left to kiss him, but she does her best for a few moments before slumping forward against his chest, which is still doing that steady rumbling sound that she finally recognizes for what it is. She's shaking all over and breathing hard and sweating and he's breathing and sweating too but not nearly as much, and she rests her head on his shoulder and he wraps his arms around her back and they breathe and sweat together, and he purrs.
When she regains control of her mouth, she asks him without lifting her head, "Am I dead? I feel dead."
His rumble breaks up as he kind of chuckles and he tells her, "I can still hear your heart beating," which is kind of eerily comforting to her. Then he adds quietly, "That was pretty amazing though, wasn't it?"
She squishes closer into him if that's possible and says, "Amazing doesn't really cover it," and she's about to shift so that he'll slip out of her, but right at that moment the door crashes inward and she freezes, too shocked to move.
Angel's arms have tightened protectively around her back, and she feels cool air rushing in through the doorway and at first she thinks the water demon has broken down the door, but then she sees a skinny woman with blue hair standing there staring at them. The woman cocks her head to one side and considers Kate, who is still a little muzzy and lightheaded but not so much that she doesn't recognize at once that the woman isn't human. She thinks about her gun. She doesn't have it with her.
The woman looks from Kate to Angel, her face expressionless. Her eyes and lips are also blue and Kate wonders why they're not killing her yet, but she doesn't move. She watches the woman warily as the woman watches Angel.
"You have mated with a human," the woman abruptly states. "Do you not fear for your soul?"
After a stunned silence, Angel clears his throat awkwardly and glances at Kate and then back to the doorway. "Uh," he says. He glances at Kate again and seems to regain his composure before saying, "Illyria, this is Kate. Kate, this is... the cavalry." The woman stares at them for a long moment. Angel adds, "Illyria, do you mind...?"
"The cavalry," Kate repeats. "So she's a good demon?"
"She's a... well, it's kind of complicated..."
From somewhere nearby, a male voice suddenly calls, "Hey, Blue! Find the poof yet?"
"The other half-breed is here," the woman announces. "He has mated with a yellow-haired human."
"Another blonde, eh?" Suddenly there is a man in a long black coat standing beside the sticklike figure, smirking at Kate and then Angel. "Good job, mate. She's cute." He turns to the blue woman and asks, "Did we bring the chains?"
"Chains?" asks Kate.
"I'm not - we don't need the..." Angel starts, but he is cut off when another male figure arrives, this one wearing full scuba gear complete with flippers and carrying a large glass jar full of water.
"Angel, we managed to subdue the... oh. Hello, there," the man in the wet suit says, his green eyes looking huge behind his mask. "You must be Kate."
"Hi," Kate says, lifting one hand in a little wave.
"Jacob," he says, "Pleasure to meet you." He smiles winningly, but without taking his eyes off of Kate whispers to his companions from the corner of his mouth, "Have we brought chains?"
"I'm not evil!" Angel protests from beneath Kate, his arms still wrapped tightly around her. "But I am naked, so I'd like a little privacy, please?"
"Still got your trousers on," the man in the coat points out.
Angel sighs heavily. He whispers to Kate, "I am very, very sorry."
"No, it's okay," she says wryly, "I was just thinking that my sex hasn't been public enough lately."
Jacob clears his throat. "We're just going to be... we'll wait outside for you Angel, and," he turns to Kate, "if you require any further, ah, assistance... that is, with your paranormal needs..." He briefly juggles the glass jar in his arms and manages to produce a business card from somewhere. "Just give us a ring," he finishes, holding out the card. She takes it from him politely, and he smiles before shuffling away in his flippers, the blue woman following and the man in the coat giving her another smirk before he also walks out.
"Nice friends," Kate says when they're gone, and she kneels up on the bench, freeing Angel's softened penis. She adjusts her panties and climbs backwards off his lap, her legs wobbly as she tries to stand, and he grabs her waist to steady her. She can breathe again now and it feels funny, like she may overdose on oxygen, and her head is clearing and she's suddenly embarrassed that she sweated so much, and that her underwear didn't match, and that Angel's friends saw them together. She looks at her clothes in a pile on the other bench and thinks about where she dropped her gun, and this whole thing was meaningless, and all she wants to do now is leave.
"They're okay," Angel answers her, and then he says, "It was really good seeing you again, Kate," and she figures he probably means it, but now she's thinking about the time he had to save her from killing herself and she's embarrassed all over again, and she thinks for a second about leaving Chicago the way she left L.A. the last time he helped her, but the business is here and she worked a long time to build her reputation as a P.I., and she thinks that as long as Angel and Co. are just passing through then she can pretend this didn't happen.
"Yeah, good seeing you too," she says brusquely, and she starts to dress, and he hesitates like he doesn't know what to say but he thinks he ought to say something, but then he just starts to put on his clothes too, and they finish dressing at about the same time.
"I'll call you," he says, and he looks sincere, not at all like a guy who fucks you and says he'll call.
"Right," she says. She holds up the business card. "Or I'll call you."
"Right," he says. He takes a step toward her, but she takes a step back so he stops. "Well... see you," he says, and he gives her a small not-really-a-smile, and she doesn't really smile back, and when he walks out she feels lonelier than she did before she showed up tonight. Then she looks at the card in her hand, and her knees go watery and she has to sit back down on one of the benches and take a long head-clearing breath to steady herself, because the telephone number listed on the card is local, and the address on the back is Chicago.
*
end.
Author: girlpire
Rating: NC17 or adult or FRAO, depending on who you are and whether or not you'll sue me.
Pairing: Angel/Kate
Disclaimer: This story is based on the "Angel" series, with which I am not affiliated in any way. Joss Whedon is my master, etc.
Distribution: Please no. kthnxbye. :)
Summary: Post-NFA. Kate and Angel run into each other while tracking the same demon.
Warnings: Big sweaty sex. Myriad runon sentences. Gratuitous use of the word myriad.
Author's Notes: This is my first Kate story. The plot was inspired by another now-defunct WB series, but if you don't know which one, them I'm not telling. :)
ETA: There's a prequel to this story [ here], but you don't have to read it to understand this one.
*
lovely banner by tamibrandt for a manip challenge at darker_spike
*
Like Drowning
*
She’s working a case in Chicago when she meets Angel again. It’s been years since she last saw him, since that day she nearly killed herself and somehow magically he was able to help her by dragging her into the shower and turning on the cold water, and she was so embarrassed that by the next week she had packed up and headed out. Seven years, she thinks, or maybe more, but she hasn’t really been keeping track, because even though she’s gotten her life back together the days still run into each other, and at first she wonders how it can have been this long, and then she wonders if it has really been that long at all because he looks exactly the same.
They’re in a private workout facility, part of a chain owned by the same people who make those shoes that are supposed to help you run faster or jump higher, and she’s thinking about how all these places look exactly the same, and then she sees him staring at her from across the Olympic-sized swimming pool, and she tries to draw a connection between all the gyms looking the same and Angel still looking the same, but she can’t really think how that’s connected. It’s night and it’s dark and there’s no one else here, and the pool is giving off some kind of bluish green light, and there are shadows and reflections waving slowly on the wall and she moves slowly, walking around the pool toward the vampire, and he doesn’t move, just standing there looking at her, kind of like he’s surprised to see her but also kind of like he was expecting her.
“Angel,” she says when she gets near enough, and it strikes her as sort of funny that she’s just said his entire name.
“Kate,” he says back. Up close she notices that maybe he does look a little different, a little thinner, or harder, or tireder than he used to, but he still looks very young, and she remembers seeing him that first time, at that club called D’oblique where they almost made a connection. When he told her he was a veterinarian.
He looks a little wary of her, and she realizes that she’s still holding her gun up in front of her chest like at any moment she’s going to shoot him, which wouldn’t kill him or even slow him down really, but she slowly holsters the weapon as a sign of good will, and his shoulders relax a little bit underneath his dark coat.
“What are you doing here?” she asks him. Her voice comes out more aggressive than she means it.
He gestures to the pool. “Thought I’d go for a swim,” he says lightly. He’s still guarded, not taking his eyes off her, like maybe she’ll attack him if he glances away.
“At two in the morning, in a private gym,” she says.
He smiles a little ruefully. “I’m not really a day person,” he reminds her. “Why are you here?”
She thinks about lying, but doesn’t. “A case,” she says.
He raises his eyebrows. “I thought you were done being a cop.”
At first she’s startled, because it’s been so long since she’s been a cop that she almost doesn’t remember it, but then it occurs to her that of course he wouldn’t know what she’s doing now because why would he? It’s not like he’s been keeping up with her over the years. That’s what it’s like when you’re some kind of champion, she thinks, when you save so many lives you don’t have time to bother with them after the job is done.
“P.I.,” she tells him, “but try to keep it quiet. I’m not exactly legit.” And he seems amused by this, so she tries to think of something else to say that will indicate that she’s not actually trying to be like him, even though she admires him, that the job just sort of fell into her lap because of the things that she knows, and because Chicago has a large population of creatures like him that she gets a thrill out of killing - not because they are like him but because they are like the ones who killed her father - but she can’t say all of that, so she just lets it drop. Let him think what he wants.
“What are you tracking?” he asks her, and it’s still weird after all this time that it’s what and not who.
She’s never been big with the sharing of information, so she doesn’t answer, and immediately asks him, “What are you tracking?” because of course he didn’t really break in here in the middle of the night to swim. Probably.
His eyes dart over to the pool a fraction of a second before she hears something like a roaring splash, and she’s suddenly soaked like someone’s pouring water over her head, and she sputters and takes a step back but it keeps pouring, and she can’t get away from it or open her eyes. Water starts swirling around her body and forcing in through her nose and mouth, and she coughs and swallows and flails her arms and falls down and tries to roll away from the water, but it’s stuck to her and she can’t. She’s going to drown.
She distantly hears the sound of breaking glass, and then suddenly instead of water, there’s a solid body with arms wrapped around her, but then it jumps up and dives into the pool and disappears, and she’s lying there coughing and breathing, and Angel offers her a hand and she takes it and lets him pull her to her feet.
“That’s what I’m tracking,” he tells her. He’s holding a fire extinguisher.
“Me too,” she says raggedly. “I think.”
“Your gun probably won’t work on him,” he points out, and she realizes that she’s holding it again, must have grabbed it as she rolled, used to having it in her hand when she needs protection. These days she also carries a stake tucked into her back pocket, but she still always grabs the gun first.
“Yeah, and what do you think that will do to him?” she asks irritably, holstering her weapon a second time and nodding at the fire extinguisher. The inside of her nose burns like she breathed in water, and it makes her almost-sneeze twice before he answers her.
“It cools him down, makes him solid again,” he explains. He starts to tell her something about the temperature of molecules and different phases of matter, but his voice kind of trails off and he looks a little bit confused, and she’s probably also looking confused, like a confused drowned rat, and he adds, “Jacob could explain it better,” and she doesn’t know who he means, but she’s sure that he’s right.
At that moment, the thing rises out of the water again and goes for Angel this time, swirling around him and covering his face, and he drops the fire extinguisher, which rolls away. He falls to his knees struggling, and Kate lunges for the small red canister, grabs it and drops her gun, which was suddenly in her hand again, before spraying the cold foamy mist in the direction of the wet vampire.
The water becomes solid, is a man-shaped demon struggling to hold onto Angel for a few seconds before diving back into the pool and disappearing. Angel is kneeling on the ground, still choking a little. Kate goes to him, but as soon as she reaches his side, the water is shooting towards them again, a long arm grabbing at them from the swimming pool, and Angel snatches the fire extinguisher from Kate and aims it at the stream, but nothing comes out. He rolls his eyes like the fact that it's empty is merely annoying and not life-threatening, but he quickly tosses it aside and grabs her by the hand instead, and he takes off running, practically dragging her along behind him.
A few seconds later, they’ve dead-ended in a tiny wooden room, a sauna, and Angel’s slamming the door closed and turning up the temperature as high as it will go. Water’s seeping in beneath the door, but as the room begins to heat up, the water starts turning into steam, and soon it stops coming in, but the water monster is still there, just beyond the door; they can hear him sloshing around. Waiting.
She wonders, now what? But Angel sits down on a bench and seems immediately lost in thought, so she sits down on the other bench facing him and tries to think of a way they can get out without dying. Pretty soon her wet clothes become a hot wet, so she peels off her jacket and they just sit there that way, not saying anything.
Then Angel’s cell phone rings.
She listens to him talk to the man who is apparently Jacob. Angel talks a little too loud, the way people do on cell phones, and she can hear Jacob on the other end replying in a accent that is probably English but could be Australian if you squint, promising that help is on the way and that they should just stay put, to which Angel responds that they aren’t going anywhere.
When he hangs up, he glances at her and starts to tell her what Jacob said, but she heard him and says so. So they continue to sit.
She wants to say something, make some small talk, but she can’t think of anything to say. He’s offering nothing in the way of communication, just leaning back against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes closed. He’s not breathing and it fascinates her for all of two seconds before she realizes that it would be impossible for him to drown. “You could go out there,” she says. It comes off rather accusing, but the water monster thing has made her angry, and she wants it to be dead already.
“I could,” he says without opening his eyes, and they sit there for a few more seconds before she gets that he’s not going to say anything else about it. And really, even if he did go out there, what could he possibly do to the thing except stand there and let it try to drown him? He wouldn’t die, but he couldn’t fight it, not without making it solid, and there’s no point sending him out if he can't fight. He glances at her and then away again. “I don’t really like water,” he adds.
“I don’t like water when it tries to kill me,” she says, and she sort of wishes she could say something that doesn’t sound sarcastic or aggressive or harsh, but she hasn’t seen him in seven years and has absolutely nothing to say to him except things that have to do with this case, and cases like this tend to put her in a bad mood, even though she feels pretty good about herself afterward.
It just gets hotter in the room. She feels sticky and gross, and she wants to peel off the rest of her clothes so she doesn’t have to wear the heavy wet things against her skin, but she doesn’t want to strip down in front of Angel, so she just sits there. After a few minutes, she tries to make some small talk, and he seems agreeable enough, but the conversation eventually dies away because neither of them is willing to get very personal, and the last few years don’t seem important enough to talk about anyway. The room practically has to stretch itself to accommodate their awkward silence.
She feels sweat beading at her temples, at her neck. She lifts up her hair and piles it on her head, wondering how he can just sit there in his big soggy coat and not seem to notice the heat. After a while, though, he shrugs out of the coat and leaves it in a dark, wet pile on the bench beside him. He is wearing a black button-up shirt underneath, but he leaves that on. Moments later she toes off her shoes and peels the socks from her feet, drops them on the floor.
“Hot in here,” she mutters, rolling up the bottom of her jeans. She shortens them as high as they'll go and he tilts his head in acknowledgement, although he doesn't seem bothered by it. She realizes that she never really thinks about vampires. She kills them on a pretty regular basis, but she forgets sometimes how they are, what's special about them. She thinks of them like animals, like dogs, and it never really occurs to her to think about their body temperature, or lack thereof, and how it would come in handy sometimes. She looks at the vampire just sitting there, being not hot, and remembers the time that he bit her.
That's something she does think about once in a while.
Just last weekend, she was attacked by a vampire at the park - she goes out some nights, a smallish blonde woman alone in the dark, ready for them - and in the middle of fighting this random vamp beside a picnic table, she just for one moment thought about the bite, and how she could briefly let the guy get the upper hand if she wanted to, just long enough to sink his fangs in and then easily dust him afterwards, but she didn't do it. Not chicken, but a little worried about what it would mean if she admitted that she sometimes thought about letting it happen. She wasn't crazy, she knew, but it felt a little crazy to want it, especially when it hadn't even felt good the first time. People get these romantic ideas about vampire bites, but really it just fucking hurts.
Sometimes her scar tingles a little bit when there's a vampire around. Now and then she feels like one of them is going to notice, like they're going to realize she's been bitten before and she sort of wants it again, but only because she thinks she might deserve it, deserve to be punished. And then they're going to kill her the same way they killed her father, and on some level to someone it will feel like some kind of cosmic balance, some kind of perfect circle, but really it won't even be that big a deal. Not like anyone would miss her.
She suddenly notices that she's touching the scar, rubbing her fingertips lightly over it on her neck, and he's not really but sort of watching her do it, and she moves her hand away because she doesn't want him thinking she's thinking about him or anything, even though she sort of is. It's so hot in the room that she feels like she can't breathe, and there's sweat trickling down between her breasts, and once she shoved a two by four through this man's chest, and does he even remember that?
She wanted him, back when she sort of knew him. She figures he had to have known, and that's kind of embarrassing when she thinks about it.
"They need to put a fan in here or something," she comments out of nowhere, just so it won't be so completely silent around them.
"I think that would defeat the purpose," he says. He's right of course, but it feels like they should have one for emergencies or something. For when people get trapped in here by water demons. Then he adds, "I can turn around, if you want."
At first she doesn't know what he's talking about, but then it dawns on her that he's inviting her to take her clothes off, and he's going to be a gentleman and not look. "No, I'm alright," she says quickly, and the fact that he looks kind of skeptical makes her wonder if it's possible to look worse than she does right now, after having been nearly drowned and then cooked alive. Her shirt is sticking to her back. "How long before your friend gets here with the cavalry? He is bringing cavalry, right?"
"He's bringing backup. Probably not with horses, though." He looks at his watch. "Shouldn't be too long. Twenty minutes, maybe." Then his cell rings again, and she listens to Jacob telling him about complications and delays, and when he hangs up he amends his estimation with, "Could take a little longer than twenty minutes."
She nods slowly. She's burning up, and her mouth feels dry, and she wonders how long it takes for a person to die of heat stroke, and the fact that she wonders that makes her mad because they haven't even really been here that long, and she's been in uncomfortable situations before so it's not like she can't handle it. The heat would be bearable if she could just take her clothes off. She looks at him, and he's sitting there in his long-sleeved shirt, which is a little damp from the water demon, and he's in absolutely no danger of having a heat stroke and she's terribly jealous, which also makes her mad. "You're not hot?" she asks him, just to be saying something because she can't stand sitting here and just sweating.
"It's a little warm in here," he concedes, and he starts to unbutton his shirt, but she can't tell if it's because he's hot or if he's just doing it to make her more comfortable because looking at him wearing that shirt makes the room feel hotter. He gets it unbuttoned all the way, but he doesn't take it off.
"A little warm," she repeats with a huff, and he kind of but not really smiles, which gives her the impression that he's enjoying some part of this, whether it's the fact of her melting or if it's because at least he's not trapped in here alone.
"It's not really the same for me," he says, by way of explanation. "I actually kind of like the heat."
She scowls at him, and he looks away, doing that not-really-a-smile thing again, and five minutes later she feels like maybe she'll pass out because her clothes are just getting heavier and wetter, and finally, she tells him, "Turn around." So he does.
She pulls her damp shirt off over her head, immediately feeling a bit better for lack of it, and stands up to push her jeans down, feeling them peel slowly off the backs of her thighs. She piles her clothes on top of her jacket on the bench, and she's wearing a black bra and lavender panties, and she's a little self-conscious because they don't match but it's not like she'd known she was going to be getting undressed where someone could see her. Except that he can't see her because he's being all polite facing the other direction. Which is stupid if you think about it, because they're going to be trapped together in this wooden box for God knows how long, and now they can't even look at each other.
She sits back down on the bench and pulls her hair up on top of her head again, holding it off of her neck. A bead of sweat rolls down the small of her back, and she closes her eyes, tries to think cold thoughts. She listens for the water demon and can still hear him sloshing outside the door, and it's just her luck, she thinks, that this would be one of those persistent demons that trees its victims and then waits around. She almost considers stepping out for a moment to let it wrap its cool arms around her, but there's no way to make it solid again to keep it from drowning her, and she feels sure she read somewhere that vampires can't do CPR, so she just sits there and lets the backs of her knees sweat and feels the slide of the wet bench beneath her ass whenever she shifts her weight.
Angel's sitting on the other bench turned kind of sideways with his head turned a little further away from her and probably his eyes closed too, although she can't tell. The room seems smaller than it did a few minutes ago; he seems closer. He slowly leans to the side and rests his head against the wall, and his shoulders slump like he's tired of waiting for Jacob to arrive, or just tired in general, and she tries to imagine slumping comfortably against the wall, fully clothed with even her shoes on, in this place. Just thinking about it makes her sweat more.
"You're not even sweating," she murmurs, mostly to herself because she doesn't really expect him to respond. From the back, he looks as though he might say something, but then he doesn't. "Don't vampires sweat?" she asks him.
"Sometimes," he says quietly. "But typically from exertion, not heat."
"So you're more likely to break a sweat from thumb wrestling than sitting in an oven."
"I'm more likely to burst into flames if I sit in an oven," he points out, face turned to the wall. "But I have to say, I've never broken a sweat from thumb wrestling."
"Is that because you're good at it, or because you don't play?" she asks.
"Both," he tells her.
"Then I declare a thumb war," she immediately responds.
For a few seconds, he doesn't say anything, but then he sort of sighs and holds out his hand in her direction, still not looking at her, and it almost makes her laugh because he's seriously going to thumb wrestle her in a tiny sauna three feet away from a water demon just because she suggested it. So she's looking at his hand there in the air in front of her and she figures what the hell, and she takes it in hers in the traditional thumb wrestling grip.
They say it together: "One, two, three, four, I declare a thumb war," and then the fight is on.
She expects it to be an easy victory because he isn't looking, but as soon her hand is in his, all she can think about is how much cooler his skin is than hers, and how she should have wiped her hand on something first because her palm is kind of sweaty and his is dry, and wow, he's got really big hands. After several seconds of letting her think she was going to win, he pins her thumb under his and quietly counts to three before letting it up.
"That wasn't fair," she says, but when he wants to know why, she can't think of an answer. "Your hand is bigger than mine," she finally tells him.
"I can't really do anything about that," he says to the wall, and after a pause he asks her, "Do you want to go again?"
She looks down and realizes that she's still holding his hand, but she's holding it differently now, like the way you would shake hands with someone, and the reason she's holding it that way is she likes the way it feels to have his hand in hers, because it's so cool against her that it feels like he's sapping the heat right out of her skin. "Uh, yeah," she says, and she feels stupid when she loses to him again because he can't even see the match.
"You're cheating," she accuses.
"No I'm not."
"You're using your superpowers."
"My super thumb wrestling powers?"
They play again, and this time she wins. "You just let me win."
"Maybe." He sounds like he's smiling, but he's still got his face turned away so she can't tell.
"One more time," she challenges.
The next match goes on for a while. She's sitting on the edge of the bench and actually concentrating on winning, and his thumb is moving around, toying with her, and her hand is sweaty and his skin is cool, but she knows she's going to win this time, and then finally she does.
She's smiling really big when she looks up from their hands and catches him watching her. It's just for a split second, and then he turns away again fast.
She's a little caught off guard, but she ignores that and exclaims, "You cheater!"
"I really don't think it's possible to cheat at this game," he tells her.
"You were looking."
"So were you."
"Yes, but I don't have any supernatural advantages."
"Well, if it makes you feel better, I wasn't looking at your thumb."
She almost accuses him of lying, but then she thinks about it and decides that he probably wasn't looking at the game because he would have won if he had been, which, oh God, means that he had been looking at her body in all its nearly-naked sweatiness while she was distracted by his hand.
"Sneaky bastard," she mutters, and she's still got his hand, only she's holding it the other way again, and his thumb is moving back and forth a little bit against her and she's noticing how much cooler her hand feels now than the rest of her body does, just because they've been touching. More sweat trickles down her back, and she leans forward and presses the back of his hand to her cheek to see how it feels, and there's probably not such a huge difference in their body temperatures right now, but damn it feels good for him to touch her face. She thinks she ought to explain why she's suddenly leaning into his hand, so she says, "You feel really good," which sounds more like she's coming onto him than she means for it to, but it's the truth so she doesn't try to explain further.
"So do you," he says softly, and she doesn't know if he means it or if he's just trying to return the compliment, but she figures he probably means it because she doesn't remember him saying things that weren't true back when she used to know him in L.A. She sits there with his hand to her face, and she closes her eyes and concentrates on her hand and her cheek, which are the two parts of her body that are tolerable right now, while everything else feels like it's going to burn away.
After a few moments, he takes his hand back from her, and she wants to stop him but she doesn't know how, so she just lets his hand go, and when she opens her eyes, he's looking at her, and she doesn't want him to be looking at her because she's thinking about his whole body being pressed against her whole body, and it kind of feels like he's going to realize that's what she's thinking about if he looks at her. And then he shrugs out of his shirt.
She looks at his chest and shoulders and arms and stomach, and she swallows, and her mouth is too dry, and then he takes her hand again. He's sitting on his bench across from her and he tugs her arm lightly like he wants her to stand up, so she does, and a bead of sweat rolls down the back of her thigh. "Come here," he murmurs, and he's still tugging her forward, so she takes a step toward him, and then he puts his other hand on her thigh and guides her knee up to rest on the bench beside his leg, and where he's touching her thigh feels really good, like he's stealing the heat out of it.
He moves both of his hands to her waist, and her hands automatically go to his shoulders, and he's not exactly pulling her anymore, but she understands what he's doing, so she puts her other knee on the bench beside his other leg, and she slowly sits down on his lap until her lavender panties are resting against his black pants, and the heat between them is so stifling that she has to take really shallow breaths.
Then he pulls her close. Her chest squishes against his chest as she wraps her arms around his shoulders, and holy shit, it feels so good to be touching him like this. And because she's still feeling a little awkward and can't stop herself, she tells him so. He doesn't say anything, but he breathes a little "Mmm" which sounds kind of like an agreement, and they sit there that way with their arms around each other, and even though he's stealing her heat, his coolness doesn't feel like it's going away.
She leans her cheek softly against his to feel that coolness on her face again. She closes her eyes and enjoys it, and then one of his arms lifts from her back with a little sticky sound, and he's gathering up her hair and holding it on top of her head so it won't be on her neck. And just as she's thinking how nice that is of him, he blows softly across her neck, across her scar, and it sends cold tingles down her whole body, and she comes this close to moaning out loud.
"That feels nice," she manages, her lips close to his ear. She thinks she hears an answering sigh, or maybe a chuckle, or something that makes his chest vibrate very slightly for a moment. He keeps his hand in her hair, and his other hand moves in slow, slick circles against her back, his fingertips just brushing against the bottom part of her bra and then the top edge of her panties, helping cool her body. She thinks about his hand sliding down underneath her panties, and she feels her cheeks flush hotter, if that's possible, and he blows softly against her neck again, making her shiver.
"God," she whispers, and she tightens her arms around him and shifts forward in his lap, pushing her stomach against his stomach as much as she can, and he definitely makes a sound then, almost a grunt, and his chest does that slightly vibratey thing again, which she's never felt before. Her nipples are tightening in her bra, and she wants to feel them pressed against his skin, but she doesn't want him to think she's some kind of slut, so she doesn't unhook it like she wants to. Anyway, this isn't a sexual thing; he's just cooling her down because he can and he's a nice guy, and just a couple minutes ago they were thumb wrestling for Christ's sake.
Her mind keeps flitting to sex and then away again.
His hand goes on rubbing her back, and she swallows and thinks about feeling him inside her. After a while, she can hardly take the wanting it anymore, and she leans back to look at his face, and he looks back at her face with his eyes, and she wants to ask him if he wants to have sex, but she doesn't want to say Do you want to have sex?, she wants to say something really sexy that will make him want it without having to say it, but she hasn't done this for a while so she doesn't really know what the thing to say is.
His eyes move from her eyes to her mouth and back a couple of times, and he looks kind of lost for a moment, like he's not sure what to do next, and she has this ridiculous thought that maybe it's been a long time since he's been with someone too, but that can't be true because look at him. He takes a deep breath and says, "Kate, I..." but she doesn't let him finish. She leans close to his ear and whispers, "Please," and she bites his earlobe and shifts on his lap, and his protest falls away like a solid thing.
She kisses the side of his neck and starts making little rocking motions in his lap, and he lets her hair fall down and sweep across her shoulders as his large hands fold around the flare of her hips, and he grinds up against the crotch of her lavender panties, making that little rumbley sound in his chest. She still wants to feel her breasts against his skin, so she reaches back and quickly unhooks her bra, slides it off her shoulders and pulls it out from between their bodies. She tosses it carelessly on the floor of the sauna and presses against him again, her pebbled nipples sliding across his chest on sweat. Her breath catches in her throat as they stiffen even more from the cool of his body.
Now he's got one hand on her hip and one pressed against the small of her back, holding her to him and still making slow grinding motions against her, which feels pretty amazing even though neither one of them is fully naked yet. He presses his face to the side of her neck and sighs deeply, then starts kissing and licking at her scar, the one that he gave her more than seven years ago, and it's tingling like crazy, which makes her wonder if there's something mystical about it or if he's just making her feel that way because of what he's doing. He closes his teeth around the same place and tugs gently at her skin. She breathes out his name. He rumbles.
Her body is a confusion of hot and cool, every inch of it either on fire or on Angel. She wants him to be touching her everywhere, partly to take away the heat but mostly because damn, and even though they're moving and grinding against each other it's not enough, so she whispers, "Touch me," and he must get what she means because he trails one cool hand down her hot back and slides it into her panties.
God, it's been way, way too long since a man has... since a man, she thinks, pushing back against his hand, and that's the only thought that she can make herself have, because everything else is completely obscured by heat and want and sweat and Angel's fingers. He's rubbing and squeezing the swell of her ass right where it meets her thighs, and then he moves his other hand down in her panties to slide his fingers along her damp slit and find her clit. He starts rubbing circles around and over it and she shudders and bites her lip and grinds against his hand and dies a little bit because it feels so good, and then she buries her face in his neck and sucks on a spot he seems to respond really well to, judging from the tiny sound he makes in his throat.
He's touching her, and she's feeling these little shocky tingles like electric current shooting from his fingertips to some place deep inside her body, and she's grinding around and panting and squeezing her eyes shut and fuck, and while he's touching her with his cool, cool hands against her heat, she works one of her hands down in between their bodies to fumble at the button on his pants. Just as she gets it undone, his thumb slides slickly inside her and her breath hitches around a quiet curse. He huffs a soft chuckle and she can feel his almost-smile against her neck, and when he starts moving his hand again she forgets for a moment what she's trying to do.
"Angel... fuck..." she breathes, and she closes her eyes and just enjoys his hands, slowly squirming on his lap while his chest does that tiny quiet vibrate thing, and she thinks, there's no way this guy is dead. No fucking way.
"Do you like this?" he whispers, and at the sound of his voice she clenches around his thumb, her clit humming beneath his fingers. God, it's been so long and she's so ready and she's going to come soon and damn, the man has skills. She sighs out a yes and the hand that's still on his shoulder digs fingernails into his smooth skin, and her head falls forward onto his other shoulder, and she arches back against his hand and her whole body tightens and she squeezes her eyes shut and concentrates on feeling him move.
Her mouth drops open and she cries out when she comes, and her hips try to buck jerkily, but he holds her still on his lap and draws out her orgasm with talented fingers.
She's breathing hard and riding the aftershocks when she realizes fuzzily that she's got one hand between them just lying there. He's still working his soaked hand against her slowly and she pulls her head up from his shoulder to kiss him deeply on the mouth, her whole self feeling loose and kind of limp. He's very proactive with the kiss and their lips and tongues move together for several long moments before she finally pulls away to look down at her hand where it rests near his zipper, and he looks down at her hand too.
"We don't have to..." he starts quietly, but she's already unzipping his pants and reaching inside for his cock. She gets it out and it's curving up from his lap all thick and hard, and she's grasping it in her thin fingers and all she can say is, "God, yes we do, we so have to," and his small sigh as she touches him sounds very much like relief.
She carefully raises up on sweaty knees on the bench, his hands sliding gently out of her panties, but rather than standing to pull them off, she just reaches down and moves the damp scrap of lavender to one side. She uses her other hand to guide his dick to her body, running the head back and forth slowly along her slit, slicking it with the evidence of her orgasm. It's so cool against her that it's almost a shock at first. She looks at Angel and he's watching what she's doing with this mesmerized look, his hands resting on her spread thighs, and he's so into her that it makes her hot even though she knows already that this is just one of those things that happens when two people get trapped in a sauna, that it doesn't really mean anything. And with that thought in her head, she sinks down very slowly, his cool cock pushing into her heat and dragging along her sensitive clit, and they both gasp out loud.
"God, Kate..." he breathes softly, his big hands gliding up her thighs, settling on her hips. She doesn't say anything but wraps her arms around his shoulders again, leans into his body and pulls him flush against her hot skin, presses her warm lips to his neck. Sweat trickles down between her breasts as she lets herself adjust where she's taken him in, and he feels so good against her and inside her, his body regulating her heat like it's what he was made for, and his hands caress up and down her back a few times while she settles.
"Okay?" he whispers, and she moans her quiet assent against his neck before bracing her trembling knees on the bench and pushing herself up again. He inhales sharply and slides his hands down to cup her ass, fingertips digging briefly into her flesh. She pauses for a moment and then slides slowly back down, her breasts moving slickly over his chest, and his eyes flutter closed and she can feel him swallow.
When she shifts up again, he's supporting most of her weight with his hands below her ass to help her move, and it almost feels like floating, buoyed on something cool and firm and rumbley. She's feeling lightheaded from the heat and as she starts to move up and down she begins taking rapid shallow breaths, and she thinks she might pass out, but she doesn't want to stop because nothing has felt this good in such a long time, and Angel's making tiny little gasping noises that are so fucking sexy that she just has to kiss him.
Their mouths and chests and other parts are all smashed together and sliding against each other and she can't get her breath, and the wet cool friction all over her body is like swimming or drowning and fucking at the same time. She's rolling her hips and grinding on the down stroke and digging her fingernails hard into Angel's back, and he makes a sound that sounds like "mmph" into her mouth and his vibrating rumble gets louder, loud and then soft and then loud again like some kind of machine.
"Fuck," she gasps, turning her head to the side to try to catch her breath. She doesn't stop moving though, up and down, her most sensitive parts somehow receiving the most attention as Angel lifts her and then moves her back to his lap over and over. Her hair is sticking to her neck and she feels his breath puffing against her shoulder as he presses his lips to her sweaty skin and now he's sweating too; the hair at the back of his neck is damp when she pushes her fingers through it. Exertion, she thinks. But his whole body is still cool.
"You feel so good," he half whispers half groans, and she echoes into his ear, "So good..." in a moan that tastes hot and tastes like Angel and like the ocean. Her knees slide wider apart on the bench and now he's lifting her up and down in shorter strokes, fast and hard and with every bounce her clit is grinding against him and she can't breathe and she can feel herself building up to another release, and she's clenching at him with everything she's got.
"Almost..." The word slips out on a shallow breath that barely has her voice in it at all and he's not just moving her over his body anymore; he's meeting her halfway with his own thrusts as his shoulders brace against the wall behind him, trapping her hands although she doesn't really notice. She's so close she almost already feels her orgasm before it has even come, and she's already spasming and fluttering around his cock while it's building up and she can't stop herself, and she mentally prepares herself to black out because she knows when this hits her it's going to be too good to be awake through it. "Fuck me..." she whispers while she can still make her mouth form words, and he does.
When she comes this time, it's like she's suddenly gone deaf, and everything is happening in slow motion. She sees Angel's face, and he's got his lips parted and his eyes screwed shut like he's in a lot of pain, and she feels him thrusting in and out of her and she knows on some level that he's moving really fast, but she's seeing him like he's underwater, and she's feeling her orgasm like it's this huge wave crashing against all sides of a tiny boat at the same time, and she's the boat, and she's being tossed from side to side and pulled under, and she floats back up and breaches the surface just in time to be hit with another wave and go under again.
She can't breathe. She thinks she might be making sounds with her mouth.
Angel comes inside her with another wave, and his cum is cooler in her belly than his skin is against her skin, and she doesn't know if it's because she's hotter inside or because he's colder inside, but it doesn't really matter because it feels good. She's still coming even after he's finished, but it's those little peaks that have to stutter away on their own, and her whole body is trembling as he finally lets her still in his lap and leans forward to kiss her lips. Time is a little slow getting back to normal.
She barely has the energy left to kiss him, but she does her best for a few moments before slumping forward against his chest, which is still doing that steady rumbling sound that she finally recognizes for what it is. She's shaking all over and breathing hard and sweating and he's breathing and sweating too but not nearly as much, and she rests her head on his shoulder and he wraps his arms around her back and they breathe and sweat together, and he purrs.
When she regains control of her mouth, she asks him without lifting her head, "Am I dead? I feel dead."
His rumble breaks up as he kind of chuckles and he tells her, "I can still hear your heart beating," which is kind of eerily comforting to her. Then he adds quietly, "That was pretty amazing though, wasn't it?"
She squishes closer into him if that's possible and says, "Amazing doesn't really cover it," and she's about to shift so that he'll slip out of her, but right at that moment the door crashes inward and she freezes, too shocked to move.
Angel's arms have tightened protectively around her back, and she feels cool air rushing in through the doorway and at first she thinks the water demon has broken down the door, but then she sees a skinny woman with blue hair standing there staring at them. The woman cocks her head to one side and considers Kate, who is still a little muzzy and lightheaded but not so much that she doesn't recognize at once that the woman isn't human. She thinks about her gun. She doesn't have it with her.
The woman looks from Kate to Angel, her face expressionless. Her eyes and lips are also blue and Kate wonders why they're not killing her yet, but she doesn't move. She watches the woman warily as the woman watches Angel.
"You have mated with a human," the woman abruptly states. "Do you not fear for your soul?"
After a stunned silence, Angel clears his throat awkwardly and glances at Kate and then back to the doorway. "Uh," he says. He glances at Kate again and seems to regain his composure before saying, "Illyria, this is Kate. Kate, this is... the cavalry." The woman stares at them for a long moment. Angel adds, "Illyria, do you mind...?"
"The cavalry," Kate repeats. "So she's a good demon?"
"She's a... well, it's kind of complicated..."
From somewhere nearby, a male voice suddenly calls, "Hey, Blue! Find the poof yet?"
"The other half-breed is here," the woman announces. "He has mated with a yellow-haired human."
"Another blonde, eh?" Suddenly there is a man in a long black coat standing beside the sticklike figure, smirking at Kate and then Angel. "Good job, mate. She's cute." He turns to the blue woman and asks, "Did we bring the chains?"
"Chains?" asks Kate.
"I'm not - we don't need the..." Angel starts, but he is cut off when another male figure arrives, this one wearing full scuba gear complete with flippers and carrying a large glass jar full of water.
"Angel, we managed to subdue the... oh. Hello, there," the man in the wet suit says, his green eyes looking huge behind his mask. "You must be Kate."
"Hi," Kate says, lifting one hand in a little wave.
"Jacob," he says, "Pleasure to meet you." He smiles winningly, but without taking his eyes off of Kate whispers to his companions from the corner of his mouth, "Have we brought chains?"
"I'm not evil!" Angel protests from beneath Kate, his arms still wrapped tightly around her. "But I am naked, so I'd like a little privacy, please?"
"Still got your trousers on," the man in the coat points out.
Angel sighs heavily. He whispers to Kate, "I am very, very sorry."
"No, it's okay," she says wryly, "I was just thinking that my sex hasn't been public enough lately."
Jacob clears his throat. "We're just going to be... we'll wait outside for you Angel, and," he turns to Kate, "if you require any further, ah, assistance... that is, with your paranormal needs..." He briefly juggles the glass jar in his arms and manages to produce a business card from somewhere. "Just give us a ring," he finishes, holding out the card. She takes it from him politely, and he smiles before shuffling away in his flippers, the blue woman following and the man in the coat giving her another smirk before he also walks out.
"Nice friends," Kate says when they're gone, and she kneels up on the bench, freeing Angel's softened penis. She adjusts her panties and climbs backwards off his lap, her legs wobbly as she tries to stand, and he grabs her waist to steady her. She can breathe again now and it feels funny, like she may overdose on oxygen, and her head is clearing and she's suddenly embarrassed that she sweated so much, and that her underwear didn't match, and that Angel's friends saw them together. She looks at her clothes in a pile on the other bench and thinks about where she dropped her gun, and this whole thing was meaningless, and all she wants to do now is leave.
"They're okay," Angel answers her, and then he says, "It was really good seeing you again, Kate," and she figures he probably means it, but now she's thinking about the time he had to save her from killing herself and she's embarrassed all over again, and she thinks for a second about leaving Chicago the way she left L.A. the last time he helped her, but the business is here and she worked a long time to build her reputation as a P.I., and she thinks that as long as Angel and Co. are just passing through then she can pretend this didn't happen.
"Yeah, good seeing you too," she says brusquely, and she starts to dress, and he hesitates like he doesn't know what to say but he thinks he ought to say something, but then he just starts to put on his clothes too, and they finish dressing at about the same time.
"I'll call you," he says, and he looks sincere, not at all like a guy who fucks you and says he'll call.
"Right," she says. She holds up the business card. "Or I'll call you."
"Right," he says. He takes a step toward her, but she takes a step back so he stops. "Well... see you," he says, and he gives her a small not-really-a-smile, and she doesn't really smile back, and when he walks out she feels lonelier than she did before she showed up tonight. Then she looks at the card in her hand, and her knees go watery and she has to sit back down on one of the benches and take a long head-clearing breath to steady herself, because the telephone number listed on the card is local, and the address on the back is Chicago.
*
end.