Riverside -- Winona Kirk/Number One, PG-13,
Title: Riverside
Author: yeomanrand and shinychimera
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s): Number One/Winona Kirk
Warning(s): Nothing here should be triggery.
Prompt(s): Winona/One: Recruit
Notes: This was originally supposed to be part of the Green Beer and Kisses Porn Battle, but it took longer to write than we expected.
Disclaimer: Not mine, I'm just playing with them. Promise to clean them up and put them back when I'm done.
Summary: Winona is fighting with Frank about going back to space, when Number One shows up and makes a different proposition than Winona expects.
~~
Goddamn opportunistic sons of bitches, Winona thought, catching the unmistakable gold-over-black of a Starfleet command uniform out of the corner of her eye. The wearer eased through the shadowy, nearly-deserted bar and grill, and the sight set Winona tense as if she'd glimpsed black and white while speeding on the highway. Wait until my brother leaves me sitting here alone before you pounce...
"Good afternoon, Commander Kirk."
Winona's lips pursed. The voice was one she'd not heard in years - female, and fondly remembered, at that - and she hated Starfleet that much more for sending her.
Winona set her cold-sweating bottle of Angry Cedar ale down on the bar's shiny chrome top with a hand that only shook a little. She made a quarter turn on the tall bar stool to look stonily at Number One; she didn't look a day older after five years out in space, even if the golden shirt with the captain's braid did give a sallow cast to her wintry complexion.
One waited for her to respond, blue eyes as unreadable now as they'd ever been; Winona was sure her own were a gas-fire blaze in her flushed face.
She forewent a greeting of her own in favor of a sharp, "I'm not going back out there, Captain. My home is here and my boys are here. It's not negotiable."
The bar was mid-weekday calm; Winona and her brother had stopped in for a quick bite and a brew but mostly to continue their argument - on the possibility of Winona returning to space - out of Jim's hearing. She wasn't about to be maneuvered into anything by the Fleet, but the decision that would remain non-negotiable with them -- until she'd made up her mind -- was becoming an acute wedge between Winona and Frank. George's parents in the city were staying scrupulously neutral.
"Commander," One said, in her sturdy brook-no-argument tone, "it would be an untruth to say I would not wish to have you on my ship; you are still one of the most skilled engineers ever to have worn a Starfleet uniform. I have seen your drive improvements for the new Enterprise, and..."
Her eyes went distant, as if looking at the plans laid out on a screen before her. Winona cocked a cynical eyebrow, expecting a Vulcanesque recitation of improved crystal efficiencies and dynamic throughput.
"And they are beautiful." She fixed her gaze on Winona again. "But you have done your duty, and have sacrificed more than most. I am not here to convince you to return."
As if looking away could hide her sudden flush, Winona glanced at the bathroom alcove - Frank was taking his sweet time.
She didn't like having her assumptions about One's purpose here blown - she wasn't often wrong where the Fleet was concerned. But she didn't know how to respond to the compliment, either. It was no surprise that One would appreciate the machine schematics - Winona's inclination to combine elegance and precision had only been strengthened by One's first-year classes at the Academy - but it was too damn rare for anyone to acknowledge the aesthetic care she took in her designs. She picked up her beer and turned the rest of the way around, resting her elbow on the bar behind her.
"So why are you here?" she demanded, bringing the neck of the bottle to her lips.
One cocked her head; that, and the warm twinkle in her eyes were all the warning Winona got. She was mid-swallow when One said, "I had hoped to seduce you. But my timing is, once again, apparently inopportune."
Winona tried to draw air in around her swallow of beer and coughed wildly instead, eyes watering with the pain from sinuses scalded by carbon dioxide.
"Once...again?"
"I had every intention of seducing you at the Green Beer Festival, in 2226."
"Green...St. Patrick's Day?" Winona's mind reeled, throwing out a picture of One, tall and sleek in instructor's grays, even before mental math identified the date as her second year at the Academy.
She tried to remember the events of the day, whether she'd spoken to One at all, but the only thing coming to mind was a memory of George, smiling, dropping a crown of tissue-paper four-leaf clovers on her head and stealing a kiss she couldn't remember whether she'd wanted to give him. Probably and probably not at the same time; she had an unclear recollection of pushing at his shoulders immediately afterward, but they'd ended the evening at the bar with her leaning back against his chest.
Winona was a little startled to feel heat rising up her cheeks that had nothing to do with the low levels of alcohol in her system, but a reaction to some nebulous guilt about missing… whatever she'd missed, that night.
"You could have," she said, thoughtfully, reaching across her body toward One to set the nearly empty bottle on the bar. "George and I… we weren't really a thing until nearly Christmas that year."
"From the beginning there was a, a passion between the two of you, that didn't bear disturbing." A faint dimple of shadow appeared between One's brows, marring the serenity of her features, and Winona grimaced, forever awkward in the face of people who recognized not just a husband lost, but a passion broken.
"Passion's one word for it. Needling, griping, taunting and outright fighting might work too." Her memories fought to rework themselves, One's admission changing the meaning of every interaction the two of them had ever had, the might-have-beens in her tumultuous if ultimately loving relationship with George.
One's eyes remained warm, soft with invitation. "At the time, I thought your choice answered my questions about what you wanted. And I'm certain that, had events worked out differently, the two of you would have been happy as any pairing.
"But the silence of space has a way of confronting you with your regrets, and five years is a long time to think about wasted opportunities, and someone far away who is as much alone as you are."
Winona nodded, understanding, leaning in just a bit further toward One when the delicate mental scaffolding she was building around her heart's tentative response evaporated under the weight of Frank's suspicious aura, crowding up behind her. She turned towards him, matching him scowl for scowl.
Here we go, she thought, and before Frank had a chance to say any of the hundred sharp-edged things she knew he was thinking, she'd turned back to One.
"Number One, this is my brother, Frank. Frank, this is Number One and yes," she said, firmly, hoping to cut his provincial response off at the root, "that is her name."
"Preferred designation," One demurred, offering Frank her hand; for a moment Winona thought she was going to have to step on his foot to get him to shake, but the manners their grandmother had drilled into them won out.
"Ma'am," he nodded, drawing in a breath for some other hopeless comment.
"You mind going back to the house on your own?" Winona asked, all impulse power. "One's just back from deep space and I'd like to show her the sights."
Frank stared at her for several longer-than-normal seconds, jaw working.
"Or stay here," she snapped, waving a hand at the beer bottles and the sports on the screen behind the bar. "The boys are fine with Rhen for the afternoon."
"Your sister has already spoken her mind with regard to going back into space, Mr. Emerson," One interjected, "and I intend to respect her wishes. But I would be grateful for the company of an old friend while I reacquaint myself with your lovely planet."
Winona felt her own lips twitch at the sudden memory of the subtle differences in sex on a starship versus sex on a planet, but smothered the impulse before it could turn into a laugh. Frank's shoulders drooped with sullen grace, and she slid off the barstool, waving the ‘tender over so she could pay for their meal. She shot her brother one last glare before offering One her elbow.
The darkness of the bar, and other shadows she hadn't felt, melted away in the bright afternoon sunlight; she and One both squinted and Winona automatically checked the sky for clouds.
"There are sights to see?" One asked; they stepped off down the sidewalk. Winona gave her a sideways glance. "Perhaps there is, indeed, a river that you could show me in Riverside?"
Winona felt a grin slip onto her face.
"Wait here," she said, letting go of One's arm and darting back to the parking lot; it was a moment's work to grab the worn woolen blanket out of the back of her truck and toss it over her shoulder.
"This way," Winona said, wrapping her arm around One's supple waist and guiding her down the road toward the English. It wasn't a long walk; soon enough they could hear the rushing of the river, though less violent than it would have been in early spring. The weather was a bit too warm for the blanket over Winona's shoulder; she was sweating by the time they stood on the bank.
One smiled at her, reached out to lift a strand of hair that was stuck to her forehead. Winona had a sudden flashback to the first time she'd stood on this riverbank, sixteen and awkward with a blanket slung over her shoulder. She returned One's smile, briefly shy as she'd been then, and glanced down to see what One had on her feet.
"Regulation boots should see me through whatever mud and thorns you have to offer, C- Winona."
"Win," she said, leading One away from the riverwalk path the city had put in when her mother was a girl, onto a thinner game trail, "and of course they will. Do you even own civvies?"
One was silent for a moment, picking her way through the thickly grown terrain.
"Does the gown that I wear to formal occasions count?"
"If it's not ‘Fleet issue, then yes." Winona found it hard to picture One in anything other than her uniform, but particularly difficult to imagine her in a formal gown; with any luck it would be blue, she thought, and not command gold. Something richer and darker than One's cornflower eyes, maybe closer to Winona's own wedgwood. Strapless, she hoped, imagining an expanse of fair skin and One's hair up in an elegant chignon; One would be as graceful and economical of movement on the dance floor as she was day-to-day. "God, I don't know that any of my formal wear would fit anymore."
"Not enough occasions to wear it?" One paused; Winona could practically hear her considering. "Or none where you would want to look glamorous, rather than stern and professional in your dress uniform?"
Winona held a sapling aside, allowing One to enter into a small grassy clearing a meter and a half above the babbling water, irritating herself with yet another mental refrain of 'you're a widow now, and widows don't'' - why had she resisted dressing up for so long? Being a rough and tumble engineer had certainly never stopped her.
"Cultural shouldn'ts, I think," she finally said, spreading the blanket out. "Expectations absorbed without contemplation about how one should live when one's spouse has died."
She rubbed her thumb over the corner of her mouth, still considering. "Also, having two small children in the house means it's easier to clean the dress uniform when I need to be formal."
She checked the angle of the blanket, ensuring they'd be able to see the river whether sitting or laying down, and gestured with her hand.
One sat, gracefully, studying Winona, who stretched out on the blanket beside her.
"And seeing you in uniform offends your brother."
Winona's eyebrow quirked, and she sighed.
"That, too, though I think just me being me offends my brother. He never wanted more than here, and..." She shook her head, gave One a rueful smile. "And no sense in going over old family nonsense."
"I have siblings, as well," One admitted. "My brothers are certain I am a changeling among them."
"Yeah, I think that about sums Frank and I up, too."
"One cannot change those who feel another's choices belittle their own." She smiled, reaching out to lift a windblown golden strand of hair away from Winona's lips.
"I know." Winona shook her head; she really didn't want to get into the growing desire to go back out in the black, the complications raised by having only Frank to leave her boys with - Rhen was lovely, but zie was also a student and would be returning to Andoria at the end of the semester, and George's elderly parents agreed with Winona that they couldn't handle her two rambunctious boys full-time. "Can't change him, can't change me. But we fight about everything anyway."
The understanding smile didn't leave One's lips, but she didn't answer, just looked out over the bank, gaze settling on the summer-lush greenery and the gentle, constant rush of their little river. The English at this point wasn't anything special, as rivers went - no spectacular scenery, no unusual flora, no interesting bends or whorls or rapids. But Winona knew how greedy the mind could be for the organic, fractal surprises of nature after five years spent mostly in the carefully designed confines of a starship. And she'd forgotten, herself, how restful, how separate from the nearby towns and farms this place could be.
She'd have to be sure to bring the boys down here a few times, before....
She shook her head at herself. Before nothing. Or maybe before they found out about the hollow for themselves.
"Where have you gone?"
Startled, Winona looked at One.
"Sorry. Woolgathering."
"Wishing?"
"Dreaming, maybe a little." She sighed. "It's not that I don't miss being out there, I do."
"I'm not surprised," One said, gaze steady on Winona's face.
"I suppose it's writ large on my face or something like that, right?"
One gave a soft laugh.
"Nothing so cliche," she answered. "But your yearning is all over your designs, the pent up power, the desire to go, to be on the move. The feeling that here is never enough - in the moment, yes, but not for the long-term."
Winona was quiet for a while; maybe she had been living too much in the moment, not looking into the future for fear of what she might find there. Becoming as hidebound as Frank, in her own way, shutting out possibilities in favor of the safety of the known. The little voice in the back of her mind reminded her she had her boys to look after, but it was drowned out by the slow realization that she needed to tend to herself, too. And teaching them to repress themselves would be a different type of failure than leaving them on their own, with their uncle, for a while.
Abruptly, she sat up and stripped her t-shirt off over her head, exposing her utilitarian sports bra. She rose from the blanket and walked back to the narrow entrance of the hollow to toss the shirt over the marker branch, trusting its location hadn't changed since she was in school. Satisfied, she came back to rest on the blanket next to a startled-looking One. The wool was coarse against the skin of her side.
"Privacy," she said with a shrug, automatically reaching back to sweep her hair up, hoping the loose bun would keep the ends from tickling her back.
"No, don't," One said. Winona let her hair tumble loose over her shoulders; One leaned closer, reaching out to brush the wayward strands from Winona's face.
Winona caught One's hand mid-gesture and drew it to her mouth, planting a kiss on One's strong palm.
"Winon - Win?" One asked, cool blue eyes fixed on Winona's.
"I don't know," Winona answered the unspoken question about the future, about their possibilities, trailing One's fingertips down along the strap of her bra. "Kiss me, and let's find out."
Author: yeomanrand and shinychimera
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s): Number One/Winona Kirk
Warning(s): Nothing here should be triggery.
Prompt(s): Winona/One: Recruit
Notes: This was originally supposed to be part of the Green Beer and Kisses Porn Battle, but it took longer to write than we expected.
Disclaimer: Not mine, I'm just playing with them. Promise to clean them up and put them back when I'm done.
Summary: Winona is fighting with Frank about going back to space, when Number One shows up and makes a different proposition than Winona expects.
~~
Goddamn opportunistic sons of bitches, Winona thought, catching the unmistakable gold-over-black of a Starfleet command uniform out of the corner of her eye. The wearer eased through the shadowy, nearly-deserted bar and grill, and the sight set Winona tense as if she'd glimpsed black and white while speeding on the highway. Wait until my brother leaves me sitting here alone before you pounce...
"Good afternoon, Commander Kirk."
Winona's lips pursed. The voice was one she'd not heard in years - female, and fondly remembered, at that - and she hated Starfleet that much more for sending her.
Winona set her cold-sweating bottle of Angry Cedar ale down on the bar's shiny chrome top with a hand that only shook a little. She made a quarter turn on the tall bar stool to look stonily at Number One; she didn't look a day older after five years out in space, even if the golden shirt with the captain's braid did give a sallow cast to her wintry complexion.
One waited for her to respond, blue eyes as unreadable now as they'd ever been; Winona was sure her own were a gas-fire blaze in her flushed face.
She forewent a greeting of her own in favor of a sharp, "I'm not going back out there, Captain. My home is here and my boys are here. It's not negotiable."
The bar was mid-weekday calm; Winona and her brother had stopped in for a quick bite and a brew but mostly to continue their argument - on the possibility of Winona returning to space - out of Jim's hearing. She wasn't about to be maneuvered into anything by the Fleet, but the decision that would remain non-negotiable with them -- until she'd made up her mind -- was becoming an acute wedge between Winona and Frank. George's parents in the city were staying scrupulously neutral.
"Commander," One said, in her sturdy brook-no-argument tone, "it would be an untruth to say I would not wish to have you on my ship; you are still one of the most skilled engineers ever to have worn a Starfleet uniform. I have seen your drive improvements for the new Enterprise, and..."
Her eyes went distant, as if looking at the plans laid out on a screen before her. Winona cocked a cynical eyebrow, expecting a Vulcanesque recitation of improved crystal efficiencies and dynamic throughput.
"And they are beautiful." She fixed her gaze on Winona again. "But you have done your duty, and have sacrificed more than most. I am not here to convince you to return."
As if looking away could hide her sudden flush, Winona glanced at the bathroom alcove - Frank was taking his sweet time.
She didn't like having her assumptions about One's purpose here blown - she wasn't often wrong where the Fleet was concerned. But she didn't know how to respond to the compliment, either. It was no surprise that One would appreciate the machine schematics - Winona's inclination to combine elegance and precision had only been strengthened by One's first-year classes at the Academy - but it was too damn rare for anyone to acknowledge the aesthetic care she took in her designs. She picked up her beer and turned the rest of the way around, resting her elbow on the bar behind her.
"So why are you here?" she demanded, bringing the neck of the bottle to her lips.
One cocked her head; that, and the warm twinkle in her eyes were all the warning Winona got. She was mid-swallow when One said, "I had hoped to seduce you. But my timing is, once again, apparently inopportune."
Winona tried to draw air in around her swallow of beer and coughed wildly instead, eyes watering with the pain from sinuses scalded by carbon dioxide.
"Once...again?"
"I had every intention of seducing you at the Green Beer Festival, in 2226."
"Green...St. Patrick's Day?" Winona's mind reeled, throwing out a picture of One, tall and sleek in instructor's grays, even before mental math identified the date as her second year at the Academy.
She tried to remember the events of the day, whether she'd spoken to One at all, but the only thing coming to mind was a memory of George, smiling, dropping a crown of tissue-paper four-leaf clovers on her head and stealing a kiss she couldn't remember whether she'd wanted to give him. Probably and probably not at the same time; she had an unclear recollection of pushing at his shoulders immediately afterward, but they'd ended the evening at the bar with her leaning back against his chest.
Winona was a little startled to feel heat rising up her cheeks that had nothing to do with the low levels of alcohol in her system, but a reaction to some nebulous guilt about missing… whatever she'd missed, that night.
"You could have," she said, thoughtfully, reaching across her body toward One to set the nearly empty bottle on the bar. "George and I… we weren't really a thing until nearly Christmas that year."
"From the beginning there was a, a passion between the two of you, that didn't bear disturbing." A faint dimple of shadow appeared between One's brows, marring the serenity of her features, and Winona grimaced, forever awkward in the face of people who recognized not just a husband lost, but a passion broken.
"Passion's one word for it. Needling, griping, taunting and outright fighting might work too." Her memories fought to rework themselves, One's admission changing the meaning of every interaction the two of them had ever had, the might-have-beens in her tumultuous if ultimately loving relationship with George.
One's eyes remained warm, soft with invitation. "At the time, I thought your choice answered my questions about what you wanted. And I'm certain that, had events worked out differently, the two of you would have been happy as any pairing.
"But the silence of space has a way of confronting you with your regrets, and five years is a long time to think about wasted opportunities, and someone far away who is as much alone as you are."
Winona nodded, understanding, leaning in just a bit further toward One when the delicate mental scaffolding she was building around her heart's tentative response evaporated under the weight of Frank's suspicious aura, crowding up behind her. She turned towards him, matching him scowl for scowl.
Here we go, she thought, and before Frank had a chance to say any of the hundred sharp-edged things she knew he was thinking, she'd turned back to One.
"Number One, this is my brother, Frank. Frank, this is Number One and yes," she said, firmly, hoping to cut his provincial response off at the root, "that is her name."
"Preferred designation," One demurred, offering Frank her hand; for a moment Winona thought she was going to have to step on his foot to get him to shake, but the manners their grandmother had drilled into them won out.
"Ma'am," he nodded, drawing in a breath for some other hopeless comment.
"You mind going back to the house on your own?" Winona asked, all impulse power. "One's just back from deep space and I'd like to show her the sights."
Frank stared at her for several longer-than-normal seconds, jaw working.
"Or stay here," she snapped, waving a hand at the beer bottles and the sports on the screen behind the bar. "The boys are fine with Rhen for the afternoon."
"Your sister has already spoken her mind with regard to going back into space, Mr. Emerson," One interjected, "and I intend to respect her wishes. But I would be grateful for the company of an old friend while I reacquaint myself with your lovely planet."
Winona felt her own lips twitch at the sudden memory of the subtle differences in sex on a starship versus sex on a planet, but smothered the impulse before it could turn into a laugh. Frank's shoulders drooped with sullen grace, and she slid off the barstool, waving the ‘tender over so she could pay for their meal. She shot her brother one last glare before offering One her elbow.
The darkness of the bar, and other shadows she hadn't felt, melted away in the bright afternoon sunlight; she and One both squinted and Winona automatically checked the sky for clouds.
"There are sights to see?" One asked; they stepped off down the sidewalk. Winona gave her a sideways glance. "Perhaps there is, indeed, a river that you could show me in Riverside?"
Winona felt a grin slip onto her face.
"Wait here," she said, letting go of One's arm and darting back to the parking lot; it was a moment's work to grab the worn woolen blanket out of the back of her truck and toss it over her shoulder.
"This way," Winona said, wrapping her arm around One's supple waist and guiding her down the road toward the English. It wasn't a long walk; soon enough they could hear the rushing of the river, though less violent than it would have been in early spring. The weather was a bit too warm for the blanket over Winona's shoulder; she was sweating by the time they stood on the bank.
One smiled at her, reached out to lift a strand of hair that was stuck to her forehead. Winona had a sudden flashback to the first time she'd stood on this riverbank, sixteen and awkward with a blanket slung over her shoulder. She returned One's smile, briefly shy as she'd been then, and glanced down to see what One had on her feet.
"Regulation boots should see me through whatever mud and thorns you have to offer, C- Winona."
"Win," she said, leading One away from the riverwalk path the city had put in when her mother was a girl, onto a thinner game trail, "and of course they will. Do you even own civvies?"
One was silent for a moment, picking her way through the thickly grown terrain.
"Does the gown that I wear to formal occasions count?"
"If it's not ‘Fleet issue, then yes." Winona found it hard to picture One in anything other than her uniform, but particularly difficult to imagine her in a formal gown; with any luck it would be blue, she thought, and not command gold. Something richer and darker than One's cornflower eyes, maybe closer to Winona's own wedgwood. Strapless, she hoped, imagining an expanse of fair skin and One's hair up in an elegant chignon; One would be as graceful and economical of movement on the dance floor as she was day-to-day. "God, I don't know that any of my formal wear would fit anymore."
"Not enough occasions to wear it?" One paused; Winona could practically hear her considering. "Or none where you would want to look glamorous, rather than stern and professional in your dress uniform?"
Winona held a sapling aside, allowing One to enter into a small grassy clearing a meter and a half above the babbling water, irritating herself with yet another mental refrain of 'you're a widow now, and widows don't'' - why had she resisted dressing up for so long? Being a rough and tumble engineer had certainly never stopped her.
"Cultural shouldn'ts, I think," she finally said, spreading the blanket out. "Expectations absorbed without contemplation about how one should live when one's spouse has died."
She rubbed her thumb over the corner of her mouth, still considering. "Also, having two small children in the house means it's easier to clean the dress uniform when I need to be formal."
She checked the angle of the blanket, ensuring they'd be able to see the river whether sitting or laying down, and gestured with her hand.
One sat, gracefully, studying Winona, who stretched out on the blanket beside her.
"And seeing you in uniform offends your brother."
Winona's eyebrow quirked, and she sighed.
"That, too, though I think just me being me offends my brother. He never wanted more than here, and..." She shook her head, gave One a rueful smile. "And no sense in going over old family nonsense."
"I have siblings, as well," One admitted. "My brothers are certain I am a changeling among them."
"Yeah, I think that about sums Frank and I up, too."
"One cannot change those who feel another's choices belittle their own." She smiled, reaching out to lift a windblown golden strand of hair away from Winona's lips.
"I know." Winona shook her head; she really didn't want to get into the growing desire to go back out in the black, the complications raised by having only Frank to leave her boys with - Rhen was lovely, but zie was also a student and would be returning to Andoria at the end of the semester, and George's elderly parents agreed with Winona that they couldn't handle her two rambunctious boys full-time. "Can't change him, can't change me. But we fight about everything anyway."
The understanding smile didn't leave One's lips, but she didn't answer, just looked out over the bank, gaze settling on the summer-lush greenery and the gentle, constant rush of their little river. The English at this point wasn't anything special, as rivers went - no spectacular scenery, no unusual flora, no interesting bends or whorls or rapids. But Winona knew how greedy the mind could be for the organic, fractal surprises of nature after five years spent mostly in the carefully designed confines of a starship. And she'd forgotten, herself, how restful, how separate from the nearby towns and farms this place could be.
She'd have to be sure to bring the boys down here a few times, before....
She shook her head at herself. Before nothing. Or maybe before they found out about the hollow for themselves.
"Where have you gone?"
Startled, Winona looked at One.
"Sorry. Woolgathering."
"Wishing?"
"Dreaming, maybe a little." She sighed. "It's not that I don't miss being out there, I do."
"I'm not surprised," One said, gaze steady on Winona's face.
"I suppose it's writ large on my face or something like that, right?"
One gave a soft laugh.
"Nothing so cliche," she answered. "But your yearning is all over your designs, the pent up power, the desire to go, to be on the move. The feeling that here is never enough - in the moment, yes, but not for the long-term."
Winona was quiet for a while; maybe she had been living too much in the moment, not looking into the future for fear of what she might find there. Becoming as hidebound as Frank, in her own way, shutting out possibilities in favor of the safety of the known. The little voice in the back of her mind reminded her she had her boys to look after, but it was drowned out by the slow realization that she needed to tend to herself, too. And teaching them to repress themselves would be a different type of failure than leaving them on their own, with their uncle, for a while.
Abruptly, she sat up and stripped her t-shirt off over her head, exposing her utilitarian sports bra. She rose from the blanket and walked back to the narrow entrance of the hollow to toss the shirt over the marker branch, trusting its location hadn't changed since she was in school. Satisfied, she came back to rest on the blanket next to a startled-looking One. The wool was coarse against the skin of her side.
"Privacy," she said with a shrug, automatically reaching back to sweep her hair up, hoping the loose bun would keep the ends from tickling her back.
"No, don't," One said. Winona let her hair tumble loose over her shoulders; One leaned closer, reaching out to brush the wayward strands from Winona's face.
Winona caught One's hand mid-gesture and drew it to her mouth, planting a kiss on One's strong palm.
"Winon - Win?" One asked, cool blue eyes fixed on Winona's.
"I don't know," Winona answered the unspoken question about the future, about their possibilities, trailing One's fingertips down along the strap of her bra. "Kiss me, and let's find out."