you're too young & eager to love

So, I started this a month ago, and I never went back to finish it. It turns out that Roman and Emere are too similar to be interesting. No conflict. Nadda. Nothing.

Here's the bits I managed:


I want to give in
to my dark self destruction.
I will find you there.
- Anonymous

They’re trying to destroy
something inside that
doesn’t belong.
- Anonymous


At three in the morning, all he can hear is the hum of traffic outside their window and the sharp way she cuts then inhales, strikes then drags, drinks then sniffs. Emere’s eyes are red-rimmed and unfocused, like they’ve spent too much time knocking against her skull. There’s a shake to her fingertips. Her blood must be thin, coursing through her veins with all the ferocity and speed of a runaway train.

He isn’t much better, truth be told, but Roman has always been a king of composure. His hands do not shake. There’s sweat stains under his arms and a wild, James Dean glare in his eyes, but he’s otherwise collected. He leans forward, plucking the cigarette from her hand, taking a drag as she absently swipes her fingers through his loose hair before settling back onto the couch. She pushes her bare feet into his lap, one leg bouncing, the muscles in her thigh twitching beneath her skin.

“What time is it?” She’s smoked so many cigarettes, her voice has that match-strike sound, all grit and stone.

“A little past three.”

Her leg keeps bouncing. He pets her calf, stroking down to her ankle and back up.

“Are you tired?”

Roman stares at her, judging her seriousness, and grins when she smirks. “I won’t sleep for days. You?”

“I have a meeting at eight.”

He glances back at his watch. “Five hours.”

“Just enough time,” she murmurs, swallowing a mouthful of gin and vermouth before she rearranges herself and slinks into his lap, a dusky arm thrown over his shoulders, her mouth catching at his bottom lip, the scratch of his beard as harsh as gravel.





Their Mondays are like their Wednesdays are like their Fridays. Rinse and repeat. A copy of a copy.

She never smells like cigarette smoke or scotch or chemicals. He never looks tired or out done or misused.

Sometimes she sleeps against his shoulder in the back of a taxi, her dark hair tangled and tousled against his broad jaw. He keeps a hand on her thigh, his fingers brushing old scars beneath the hem of her dress.





She takes shots of vodka standing half-naked in the loft’s open kitchen, a hip cocked to the side, wearing one of his work-out tanks and nothing else. It’s five in the afternoon, but she shouldn’t be home - she has a list of appointments longer than the Hudson that have her booked for the next week solid - and she definitely shouldn’t be three sheets to the wind. It’s early, even by Emere’s standards, but she already has that feral cat look about her, the angry, ready-for-a-fight attitude she adopts steadily, hour by hour, as the day progresses into night. It’s usually worse after half a bottle of Ketel One. Roman considers himself lucky, even if the hair on the back of his neck stands up in warning.

He loosens his tie, sidestepping a knocked over vase on his way into the kitchen, and pours himself a shot. While he’s at it, he pours her another one, and leaves the cap off the bottle. He’s a whole head taller than her and he makes good use of the height, looking at the cabinets in front of him rather than down at her. Trying to catch her gaze would be like willingly looking into Medusa’s stare.

“Bad day, dear?” he asks.

Emere takes the shot as an answer and slams the glass down on the counter. “Fuck you.”

Roman lifts his own glass to his lips and tips it back smoothly, the burn settling down his throat and into his chest with the glow of an afterthought. He pours another round. She reaches for hers, and he swats away her hand.

“Hold on, let me catch up, and we’ll see what happens.”

He tips his shot back again, surprised by the sound of her laughter.

This is supposed to early, young Emere. Emere that looks like this: http://67.media.tumblr.com/580c8fe5b910bc2f8fa5c4b6a2fa690b/tumblr_nctm7lPYrP1qz4acfo1_1280.jpg

Or this: http://cs303810.userapi.com/u103248306/152448911/z_57cb2ca2.jpg

I was trying to flesh out a new character, but it became more Emere-centric/Emere-POV rather than focused on Jameson. I'll try again later. At least this is something, right?


--



There’s a meeting in his office at a time that’s too late to be decent. In response, she wears a skirt that’s too tight to be professional, a dark blouse tucked in but with the top buttons undone.

It’s the same old song and dance.

She’s young and beautiful – too beautiful, really, considering she’s barely over twenty, too beautiful to be soft (she’s harnessed her looks into a weapon) – and he’s in a position of authority.

They fuck like they aren’t strangers, like they haven’t just seen each other casually across departments, like she isn’t nearly seven years his younger. He keeps his mouth on hers, biting on her lip, tasting her with his tongue. She tangles her dusky hands in his hair, ruining its slicked-back look. He messes up her skirt, his greedy hands wrinkling the fabric, and she pushes all the items off his desk when he shoves her against it. Everything is tit for tat.

Afterwards, she has to pick up her portfolio spreads from the floor; they had slipped from her hands when he grabbed her by the inside of her arm. She does this after she fixes her hair and her lipstick; he’s straightening his tie, clasping his belt.

“I like this,” she says, still a little breathy, reaching over to run her fingers against the groomed hair on his face.

“So does my wife.” Jameson’s grin gets lost in his beard.

She raises an eyebrow. “A wife? So you’re just a piece of shit in a good suit.”

“Yeah, well, welcome to advertising, sweetheart. We’re all pieces of shit.”

“You’re still hiring me?” There’s a notch of surprise to her voice. “Don’t tell me office fucks are part of the new interviewing process.”

“Technically, Floyd is hiring you. He’s the boss. I’m just your partner.”

“So this was, what? A seduction?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

She makes a soft, noncommittal noise. Her eyes are dark and her mouth straight. She has a way of closing herself off so that she’s impossible to read. It’s a defense mechanism, but Jameson doesn’t know that yet.

(He never really bothers to learn).




“He could be your father,” Brando tells her over the phone, his voice full of judgement.

She pictures his disapproving gaze in her mind and rolls her eyes. “Hardly. He’s not that old.”




They walk out of the building together. Jameson holds open the door, offering her a cigarette. “You want to get a drink?”

Emere shrugs. “Sure,” she says because she knows he’s paying.

It could be any Tuesday or Thursday night.




She’s good at her job. She might be better than him, actually, but Jameson has the experience under his belt and the rapport with the clients. He does most of the talking over the expensive dinners; she smiles encouragingly, showcases the rough drafts of concepts, and wears paper-thin dresses and diamond rings on her fingers. The clients like her more than they like the advertisement blueprints sometimes, but the night almost always ends with signed contracts and champagne bottles.

Occasionally, she points out his flaws like they’re her own.

“Your Vienna Beef campaign was shit, you know that, right?” She cuts into a steak rare enough to bleed.

“Not my fault. You can’t make hotdogs sexy.”

“You’re lucky I distracted your bad taste with my spectacular tits.”

Jameson laughs, throaty and harsh. “Where do you buy those dresses?”

“From the prostitutes on the corner, obviously.” She winks.

She eats like she’s starving. She isn’t used to having money, to fancy restaurants where waiters pour water from reclaimed wine bottles, where the napkins are linen rather than paper, and there are no prices listed on the menus. She fakes it well enough. Jameson forgets sometimes that she’s a Jersey girl. It takes three dinners for him to realize she’s trained the accent out of her own voice and that she’s practiced the way to smoke a cigarette, harkening back to Audrey Hepburn movies with the delicate way she inhales.

He notices the scars on the insides of her arms on the fourth dinner. He nods towards them, eyes serious. “What happened there?”

Emere doesn’t look. She doesn’t touch the scars self-consciously or try to pull down the slinky, gossamer sleeves of her dress. “I was bored in high school.”

“Must’ve been bored a lot.”

“You have no idea.”



It surprises her how much they don’t fuck at work. It surprises her that she’s capable of liking him in spite of their limited relations. It surprises her that he’s funny and warm and professional (excluding the occasional glance or touch of her hip when he passes her while she’s pouring her fourth cup of coffee in the breakroom). A small part of her dislikes it. She wants to be distracting, she wants to be memorable, she wants to burn.

She thinks the rest of the office must know. If they do, they keep their mouths shut. Or maybe they’re used to it; maybe he’s done this with all the new girls. Or maybe they keep their silence because he hasn’t, he wouldn’t, and they think this affair will be the ruin of him. She’s the harlot with the scarlet letter.

Sometimes she lets her imagination get the better of her. She read too many books in college.




They do not go to the company Christmas party together. She shows up two hours late, her dress as red as cranberries, smelling of honey and crisp apples. While his secretary gossips with his wife (a waspy woman named Carol), she gives him a blowjob in the bathroom, his hand fisted in her hair, his groans more pleased than pained.

Later, she shakes hands with his pretty, blonde wife. Emere compliments her jewelry and modest heels. They even clink glasses when Floyd finishes the obligatory Christmas speech.

She’s aware of how bruised her knees feel the entire time they’re talking, but she doesn’t feel ashamed.




Jameson never talks about his marriage. She doesn’t even know if he has kids.

He never stays the night at her place.

They share bottles of whiskey on her fire escape and smoke cigarettes. Sometimes he smokes cigars instead. He often smells like lemon and saffron and sage. It’s a cologne she’s familiar with but can’t place – clean and straightforward. It doesn’t really fit him, which makes her think it’s a standard birthday present from Carol.

They don’t hold hands. She doesn’t lean her dark head on his broad shoulder. He doesn’t kiss her temple or tell her she’s beautiful in a sad, violent way.

They drink and they laugh and they fuck and Monday mornings he’ll bring her a coffee.

So, I haven't written anything in a while. I blame graduating and writing finals and the usual graduate school bull. I meant to expand this, but I just … never did. Ran out of interest, I suppose. But hey! It's something. Kind of. Sort of. Not really.

Drey and Emere as vampires. Regina was supposed to be in there, but I didn't get that far.

--



“Why do you still bother with that?”

“Which that?” Emere raises her hands, indicating to the martini in her left and the cigarette in her right.

“Both.”

“You know what they say … about old habits and all.” She hands the cigarette to Drey, watches the way her mouth closes around the filter when she takes a drag, and swirls the skewered green olives in her glass.

Drey folds herself into a nearby chair, her long limbs moving elegantly, retaining their dancer’s rhythm even when she isn’t performing. She brushes her hair from her eyes and stares too long at the burning end of the cigarette before speaking again. She lacks a tone of matronly concern or badgering. “It’s been three weeks. Where have you been?”

“Berlin.”

“Bullshit.”

“Why do you ask questions that you already know the answer to?” Sometimes, Emere sounds painfully sharp, like the polished steel of a blade or the tip of a poisonous fang. She is more molasses tinged tonight, unusually honeyed, as though all of her dangerous contours are draped in silk.

“Old habits.” Drey quips, the corner of her mouth flicking upward.

“May they die before us.” Emere raises her martini in salute, finishing the remaining alcohol in one swallow of her long throat. The gin tastes like air, but she feels the heat and wetness in her mouth, and it is almost enough.


--

“She’s Nosferatu!”

“… She’s Italian?!”

Ha. Mel Brooks, you crack me up.

I wanted to write Emere in a therapy session but what came out instead were Emere and Brando as vampires. It was, admittedly, a cheap ploy. Vampires are my writing safety zone. Oh well. Is it still incest if they’re the undead?


--



“I miss this.” Emere mumbles, her voice soothing but smoky, a whisper of a savage undercurrent. She’s all syrupy now though, languid, slow moving. Her feet are bare, the pearl polish on her toes chipped, and she rubs her left ankle against the back of her calf. She doesn’t seem to mind the broken glass on the thick carpet or the smell of death that is steadily mounting in the room. The blood always does this, temporarily distracting her. It makes her nostalgic, an emotion Brando isn’t used to seeing in his sister; she was never prone to nostalgia when her pulse used to beat. He scratches the back of his neck and kicks his feet up onto the table, watching Emere as she hovers her nose above a cold mug of coffee. It would be amusing if he weren’t already so used to the scene.

“And this.” She taps the bottle of vodka, tipped over and spilt, on the table. She bites her bottom lip, remembering a liquid kind of burn, then crawls onto the nearby sofa. “Do you have a cigarette?”

Old habits die hard and, since smoking seems to be one of the few things about their mortal lives that doesn’t physically sicken them these days, Brando tries to keep a pack on him for whenever Emere gets a craving. He lights one for her and hands it over slowly. The smoke in his mouth is weightless and without flavor.

His sibling moves like a cat. She crawls gingerly over the wide back of the sofa, swinging her legs down, and walks on her toes to avoid stepping against the body of a middle aged man. His eyes are still open, and they gaze up at her with lifeless accusation. She taps the ashes of her cigarette onto his chest and crouches, lifting his arm to press her nose against the inside of his elbow. The puncture wounds there are too small to be from fangs. “And that.”

“That,” Brando glowers, “smells like poison. You should pick someone cleaner – ”

“What is this? Recipes for a healthier living style?” Emere quips, dropping the man’s arm unceremoniously and circling back around the couch. She hesitates, unsure of where to sit now that she’s noticed the second body, a woman, draped like a curtain over the side of the adjacent wingchair. Seeing death makes it more difficult for her to ignore the smell. It’s starting to seep in now, and she wrinkles her face in displeasure, snubbing out the cigarette on the coffee table.

On cue, Brando drops his feet to the floor, and Emere curls into his lap, her arms draped lazily around his neck. He turns his face into the heavy fall of her hair, curling the ends around his fingers absently. He can’t smell anything about her except for a hint of the blood churning beneath her skin, and even that isn’t really hers anymore. She is oddly absent. The fabric of her dress wrinkles against his chest while she turns, wrapping her legs around his waste, pressing her forehead to his. The bones of her dead body blanket him, and he can’t feel much of it at all. He thinks of her as hollow, a bird’s skeleton that he could crush easily.

Outside, in the city, a dog barks and a siren starts. If he concentrates hard enough, he can hear the worried heartbeats of the neighbors coming through the walls. Emere caused too much noise again.

“We should go.”

“They were rotten people anyway.” Emere murmurs, unwrapping herself from her brother.

They weren’t, but Brando doesn’t argue with her.

Before they leave, slipping like phantoms out the window and down the iron fire escape, Emere takes a coat from the woman’s closet. It’s burgundy and lined in silk. Vintage.

Usually, I write AU Brando and Emere with some full-fledged incest plot. I meant this to be like that, but it actually turned out more realistic than I had originally planned. I classify it as AU, but it’s probably a decent portrayal of how their relationship and lives went. Maine guest stars, of course. The ambiguous opening and ending quotes are taken from Shame.

This is the longest little thing I have ever written, I think. It’s eight pages. Eight. I feel proud. Woo. Maybe writing 20-page essays for grad school has made me less intimidated by length, although I still think it’s easier to do a theoretical analysis than a decently paced work of fiction.

Placed under the cut due to length! Enjoy.


( some old fires were burning )

I am alive! (I always say that like the old black and white Dr. Frankenstein does.)

It's been so long since I've written anything original rather than fandom-based. I don't know how good this is. I should have written adult!Emere rather than teen!Emere, but whatever, I went with my muse. My untrustworthy muse. 1015 words. Woohoo. I feel like I start adopting the style of whatever author I'm currently reading frequently, so this doesn't seem like my usual writing tone. Or mayheps I have not written in so long that I couldn't find my usual writing tone. Either works as an explanation.

As usual, I'm too lazy for a cut.

--





“Do you think mom is pretty?”
Emere turns her head, eyes Brando as they lounge on top of the unwashed sheets of his bed, his small television set flickering from a bad antenna connection. She considers spitting at him but instead she swats at him with her foot. He catches it, strokes a hand not as dark as hers down her skin.
“Desperation is never attractive,” she murmurs, rolling away, onto her back and closing her eyes. The pictures there, in the darkness of her mind, are foggy. She’s still a little stoned from smoking with Maine after school. The pot smell lingers in her hair.
“You shouldn’t hate her so much.” Her brother says after a moment, offering advice in a tone traced with sadness, a grief he had long before she finally paused enough to take notice of it. In some ways, he’s more broken than she will ever be. “Hating her makes you no better than she is.”
For a moment, Emere thinks of climbing over him, ghosting kisses across his face and neck, stroking a hand down his chest, dusky fingers in dark hair. Instead, she stays quiet and rolls off the bed. Quickly, she presses a kiss to his temple, hard, not nearly sweet enough, and she cannot tell him. She hardly thinks herself better than her mother.


Cale must be what happens when a serpent mates with a lion. He has eyes of shifting cunning and a predator’s grin. But his thoughts are simple, if not altogether innocent. Watching Emere smoking a cigarette next to her brother’s old truck, he thinks: she is the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. He will never be intuitive enough to know that it is her terror and her grief and her rage that draws him to her. Instead, she must simply be beautiful. If Emere had known, she would have hated him even more. Her thoughts were never so simple.
Brando notices the way Cale watches his sister. All but his eyes are silent.


After their date, Cale walks her back to her home. It’s an awkward word for the rusty trailer, but it’s all she has. Emere’s dress is short, her makeup smudged, and she trembles a little from cold and rage alike. Cale’s voice mocks the shells of her ears while her dark hair covers the scar on her shoulder from where he once pushed her too fiercely against a broken window. When they reach the side of the trailer, he takes her by the wrist, and the touch stops them both. Or it stops her, because he leans forward and captures her mouth, lacking all the necessary warmth. The world is dark, and he pushes her against the old aluminum siding, shoves his hands into her loose curls.
Kissing him has always felt like falling in love. Or being shot.
Emere wraps her legs around his waist; he holds her aloft, struggling with buckles and belts and the easily torn lace between her legs. Her moans sound like butterflies stretching out and dying on the gravel around them.

When she finally stumbles inside, kicking her heels off unceremoniously, she smells of stale sweat and her thighs are sticky. She is a lean shadow in a narrow, confined space. Her mother, blessedly, is not home. Brando is, however. She can hear his music playing. She pours two glasses of gin from the bottle hidden beneath the bathroom sink before carrying them to his room. Emere keeps hers, but pushes her hand through his makeshift door, the curtain parting to reveal her wrist and the jingle and swirl of alcohol and ice shivering in a glass.
Brando looks up once, eyes dark, then turns the volume up on his radio. His boss from the junkyard gave it to him as an early Christmas present; he’s been grateful more than once for the sound.
Emere steps in anyway. She is not the type to depend on invitations. She places the drink down next to him, loudly and with suggestion, before sitting on the edge of his bed. The mattress is small and worn. It’s starting to dip in the middle. She runs her palm over the indention, tracing the curve of space, and swallows her gin until the taste of juniper makes her cringe. “You should sleep with me.”
“Let me guess. Because I’m the only guy in town who hasn’t?” Seventeen years old, but all the anger in his voice makes Brando sound like a man.
His sister laughs. “No. I meant because of your mattress.”
“It’s fine.”
“Fine. Everything to you is fine. Must be your favorite word.” She rolls her eyes, finishes her drink, then curls her body around outline of the dip in the bed. Her dress rides up on her thighs. Her hair spills against the side of her face, brushing over her swollen mouth. Brando’s shoulders are very tight, she realizes, the solid square shape of him far more adult than she would have thought. “Are you going to drink that?”
In response, he pours the drink out his window. The gin trails down the siding, mixing with the marks on the aluminum she made with her back moments before. Brando knows what pain is. But, in a way, he thinks everyone does. Everyone hurts and everyone’s lives are a mess. He knows what pain is. But he thinks there might be a difference between the physical and the emotional, he thinks, but then he watches Emere make another drink and knows it’s all the same.


Still, he falls asleep next to her. She didn’t wash her makeup off and her dress is wrinkled in the morning. When the sun breaks into the room, Emere yawns into his shoulder, already feeling an ache between her legs and a headache near her temples. She rubs at her eyes and the hard curve of Brando’s shoulder moves beneath her open mouth. Still soft with sleep, his hand slips down her side absently.
They are little more than bickering fools, but they can’t seem to keep their legs untangled.

So, I almost forgot my password for this journal. That's how long it's been since I've updated. For shame.

I don't know if this should count as an update, because the following bits make no sense. I'm not even sure what I was attempting to write, but I wrote something. That has to count in the smallest of ways.

Writing after a long hiatus is nothing like riding a bike. You can't just sit down and start typing away. Blast.

-




“I begged you to hear me;
there’s more than flesh and bones.
But take the spade from my hands
and fill in the holes you’ve made.”
- Mumford and Sons


She’s there when he gets out of the shower - her arm perched on the windowsill and smoke rolling over her lips. Her eyes move over him, slow, like her hands used to when she stumbled, drunk, into his bed as a teenager.

Emere is a constant presence, so much that it’s less like she’s the presence at all. It’s something else. Something like blood and bone, the gristle of muscle, the unavoidable connection of heritage. A presence she made, or had he made it? Long ago, when she wanted it, when it was different between them. Him, her, them. Brando has been relegated to some strangely platonic category of boy reserved for first cousins (bewildering, then, that as her brother he is so unaccustomed to the role). There’s a fair bit of nudity, drunken frottage, but it’s less now than when they had been kids. She has not kissed him in years. She barely touches him at all.

“What are you doing?”

“Being a voyeur.”

Brando nods without a grin. He hides himself behind a towel and runs his calloused fingers through his wet hair. Emere laughs and rolls her eyes before tossing her cigarette out the window.

--

As a child, she broke the fingers of other kids. Out of curiosity and out of retribution for stealing her toys.

Brando remembers her as being vicious, always. She’s torn him apart in the worst ways and his scars are ugly.

--

She would never confess it now, but it takes a while for Emere to get used to the city. Living in it is different from when she was just visiting. The noises keep her awake, and she feels eyes on her wherever she goes. She drinks too much, seeking comfort, then finds her way in the dark to his apartment.

He lets her in and gives her a shirt of his to sleep in. She takes it and puts it on because she’s missed the way he smells and wearing his clothes, and she’s too drunk to be angry about admitting it.

-

Emere sleeps on the couch, her long limbs pulled close. Her hair spread across her arms, and she smells like the tequila she drank earlier. He had to take off her shoes, but she shimmied out of her jeans herself, pushing them away hastily as though he was someone else. Someone that could be captivated by the shadows on her legs, the space between her thighs.

Weekends might be my only time for creative endeavors now. I'm trying to make that beneficial. I'm hoping it'll be like a deluge of writing when I try since I'll have a week off between attempts. So far, so good. 1369 words on a scene with Emere from her childhood. Working on cohesiveness and building a story, along with showing similarities between Emere and her mother.

The ending I definitely just wrapped up real quickly and lamely. I started to run dry.

( temptation beats like a drum )

Obscure moments of Emere's life pop into my mind all the time. I decided to write one down. Naturally, Maine is present and involved.

-




“Don’t you want to, I don’t know…” and Emere sounds sad, so sad, unlike her cold eyes and smiling mouth. A mouth of plums. Beguiling, so that Maine does not immediately recognize her tone of voice. “… Do something?”

“We are doing something.”

Emere shakes her head, stretches her arms and laughs. A ripple runs through Maine’s sternum at the sound. “No. Something lasting.”

“You need more pot.” With her paint splattered fingers (long and beautifully tapered), Maine tries to hand the half-smoked joint over to her left, but the other woman untangles herself and drinks longingly from a battle of Chopin vodka. Watching her and her movements, the fluid grace of her arms, the unintentional smooth turn of her hips, the way her dusky hands shake, Maine is struck with a feeling terrifyingly close to being serious. It’s unsettling.

“C’mon, lemon drop. Let’s make you right as rain.”

“You sound like Juniper.”

Maine takes that as a compliment.


-


New York is cruelly cold. The air is so frigid that Emere wears two coats, her dark hair tangled by the wind, the bottom half of her face mostly blanketed by a scarf. Maine is shivering but otherwise oddly unaffected. The taxi waiting by the curb honks impatiently and someone from the corner across the street yells obscenities.

“Look up.”

“I’ve seen Time Square, thanks.” Her hands are shaking so badly that she can barely light a cigarette. The wind makes her unstable in her heels. Emere has the beady-eyed look of a stubborn mare refusing to be broken, but Maine is patient. She chides under her breath and pulls on the brunette’s collar, buttons her coat more firmly against the chilled air, then tips her chin up with her fingertips.

Maine smells like paint thinner and negatives, heady marijuana smoke and cinnamon. Her fingers are dry and warm so Emere obliges, lifts her gaze to the top of the sky and the billboard that spans the tallest building. “You made that.” She tells her, soft and close to the shell of her ear.

“Your point? It’s a fucking advertisement.”

“In Time Square!” She digs her elbow into Emere’s side. “Stop ruining the moment, bitch.”

Emere laughs and, for a moment, leans her weight into the blonde.

My stepmother has switched all of the house-freshener scents to holiday smells. Our coffee creamers are even holiday flavored. As a result, I felt like writing some various fluffy holiday moment with a few characters. Except Henry and Penelope's is just fluff, but we'll assume it's set during the winter.

I'm too lazy for a cut.


-



After the leaves change, the temperature drops dramatically.

Addison covers her neck in warm scarves, red berry-colored for the season. Each night Mischa has to unwrap her like a present till the stretch of her pale throat shows, the life vein sweetly taunting. She asks if she tastes like gingerbread and powdered sugar, peppermint mocha, or eggnog.

She asks him for a fire while winding candy-canes into the branches of an oversized tree. It barely fits in her apartment. When he searches for matches and kindling, Addison stares as though disappointed. “You can’t just make one?”

“… I am making one.”

“No, with your mind, I meant.”

Mischa’s voice breaks. “Where do you get these ideas from?”

“Anne Rice. True Blood.”

“Mortal fancy.” He teases while almost getting chimney soot all over the palms of his white hands. “You probably think I sparkle too.”


-


Emere taps her foot against the floor. One hand dramatically on her hip and the other holding a martini, she stares at the stove.

“You have to turn it on. Preheat it.” Brando explains from his vantage point at the counter. Maine sits next to him, and she keeps hitting his ankle with her cold toes. She smells a little like pot and vodka and warm sugar cookies.

“Yes, thank you for the obvious statement.” Her hair has gotten too long, her brother notices. It falls far down her shoulders, scraping the middle of her spine. It’s almost as dark as the turtleneck she’s wearing, and he can tell that it’s cashmere without touching it.

Maine lights a cigarette. “C’mon hot stuff. I’m a hungry, hungry hippo.” She almost snorts from her own amusement; Emere hears it and snicker-scoffs, accidently swishing vodka from her glass when she turns to face her two guests.

“… Did any of us actually bring food to cook in the stove?”

Brando rubs his forehead, but Emere thinks she sees him grin. The tightness of his shoulders could be silent laughter. Maine hums with thought then shakes her head. “Nope, no ma’am. Not enough room for a turkey in my purse.”

“Right. I have uppers in my fridge. We don’t cook those.”

After a moment, Brando scoots his chair back and reaches for his cell phone. “How’s Chinese sound?”


-


Katerina’s skin is frozen, but she turns her face up to the wild night sky. The deep blackness above that is dashing down snow. It gets caught in her thick hair, in the fur around her shoulders, melts against the fabric of her dress.

“You’re going to catch your death out here.” Cassius flips his collar up closer, suppressing the desire to shiver.

“Impossible. In Russia we would have been blanketed by snow already. Your American winters are as weak as your American blood.”

“With my blood being the exception, of course, darling.” He kisses her hair when he steps close, and she laughs, curling against his arm and sharing the heavy weight of her fur.


-


Penelope curls deeper into the warmth of the bed. It’s feather soft now that she made Henry change the mattress.

It’s hard to see much more than a tangle of blonde hair. The blankets are less of a problem, but three Great Danes have sprawled themselves around her, breathing loud and forming a visual blockade.

Henry rubs his jaw. He needs to shave. It’s not much of a concern at the moment though since he’s more focused on trying to reclaim his side of the bed. He whistles softly, snaps his fingers. One of the dogs lifts its head and wags its whip-strong tail. The other two glance but look at him unconcernedly.

He sighs. Those dogs used to really be something, a monument to his patience and dedication, as loyal and ready to serve as any hellhound could be. Until Penelope spoiled them with treats and too many afternoon naps. His wife. Ever the unexpected interruption of his structured life.


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