'til death do us part.

Iris Dahlstrom

So she knows that about him now: when she scratches him, he just starts fucking her harder, panting and slamming into her and eating at her mouth, fucking her so much harder. That's good to know. Iris files that one away. She wonders how he likes getting bitten. If maybe having his ass slapped while he's fucking her turns him on. She wonders for a second, and then there's sex, and she isn't wondering anymore, she's just enjoying herself. They're quite entertaining, these bouts of theirs.

--

After, she scoffs at him. His pretense of being scandalized by wanting a washcloth like he didn't just make a mess of her. She rolls her eyes. She doesn't say aloud:

I'm Missus Dahlstrom and you're sweetheart. That they already have pet names for each other, after one night. A few hours. However long it's been.

They might have been here for weeks.

--

They wash up. They -- finally -- leave the bedroom, and they hold hands. They head for the stairs, and this time he had better be wearing a goddamn shirt because BOY HOWDY if he didn't. He has to get a job. He has to look respectable for once in his Gaia-forsaken life. Who is going to trust him to keep the grounds around here and fix broken pipes if he can't wear a shirt?

Which is the BOY HOWDY part.

They make it downstairs. By day, the bar down there is mostly empty. There is only one person there, an older woman sitting on a stool behind the bar, wearing spectacles. She's knitting. She's not old. Just. Older.

She glances over the rims of her spectacles at them as they come downstairs. Iris, suddenly nervous, looks at Coll and smiles. Winningly.

Coll MacCulloch

He's sweetheart.

He's also bastard, limey son of a bitch, and -- when she's feeling civil -- Mr. MacCulloch. He is sometimes, in very rare, very special occasions usually involving arousal, he is Coll. He suspects in the future he might also occasionally be honey or sweetie or darling or jackass or jerkoff or shithead, mood- and situation-dependent. He think there might be cases in which rags and sponges might be thrown at his head. He can imagine, on some hot summer's day, blasting her with the industrial-kitchen-sink's spray nozzle as she walks by. Making her shriek, making her smack him repeatedly with her palms, at least until he catches her hands, at least until he convinces her that it's so much more interesting to be making out against the rack of clean dishes. He has amorphous and happy little ideas of the future, and it makes him amorphously happy to think of them.

Downstairs, then. The strange denizens of the night before have moved on. The strange denizens of the night to come have yet to show up. Just one woman there, older-but-not-old, knitting, spectacles: a little bit severe, perhaps, but not unkind. Her hair is grey; it is up in a bun. Her needles clack and clack and clack and clack, though she doesn't seem to be knitting a sweater, or darning socks, or anything of the sort. She's knitting some very long, very broad, very strange fabric: a complex weave of chaotic, multicolored yarn. Here a thread begins. There a thread ends. Here they join, and there they split; here they intersect, there they divide. Her fingers move. Her needles flash. Her spectacles catch the morning sun.

She looks, Coll thinks, exactly like the sort of woman you would expect to run a bed-and-breakfast-y inn

at the end of time.

--

Iris is looking at him. Coll blinks. He whispers, "I thought ye said you'd talk to them abou' us stayin' on," and she just smiles at him, winningly, and he plasters this grin on his face and then,

then the proprietress is looking at them, her knitting not missing a beat. At him.

"Er -- "

He rubs his thumb restlessly, uncertainly over the side of his fingers. A beat or two. Then he finds his courage, and his voice. He takes a few steps forward, Iris's hand in his.

"Goo'mornin'," he says, and no Iris he does not say top o' the mornin' to ye, he's not Irish, "I'm Coll MacCulloch an' I am a werewolf. This is m'wife, Iris Dahlstrom. We ha' been talkin', an' -- well, we were wonderin' if we migh' stay on here. If ye migh' ha' room for th' two o' us. We coul' help ye run th' inn."

The staccato music of the needles stops. The woman looks from one to the other; back.

Then, to Iris: "What can you do?"

Iris Dahlstrom

One of these days Coll is going to blast Iris with a spray nozzle while she's walking by and even though it's a hot summer's day she won't be amused, and that makeout session he 'convinces' her to have will end very painfully for him. One of these days he's going to squirt her with the spray nozzle and she's going to storm upstairs and lock the doors on him so he can't come home until he goes and gets her some flowers. Somewhere.

Coll is certain there are grounds to keep. He'll paint the exterior, but Iris doesn't remember what the exterior of this place looks like. She's not sure there's a garden. Or a little village nearby. She's not sure there's anything outside of this. Part of her affection for him is not telling him this just yet; part of her willingness to stay here is being afraid to leave. And that's not exactly the greatest reason to get married but she never said she was perfect.

Her thoughts about the future are a little more complicated, but no less amorphous. If that works.

--

When Coll whispers at her, Iris just shrugs at him. Smiles like that. And she is winning and he is won, so he grins and goes to the knitting woman and walks forward. Iris steps with him, his comely bride, et cetera et cetera.

She doesn't bat an eyelash when he says he's a werewolf. Nor does the knitting woman. She just pauses her knitting, lowering the needles, and looks to Iris to ask her what she can do.

Iris, true ulfsdottir that she is, straightens her back like she's been challenged. "I can work," she says, bluntly.

Coll MacCulloch

The knitting woman, which is perhaps how they will come to think of her, flicks her eyes quickly, discerningly over Iris. Those eyes are very clear, very grey. No color; neither black nor white. She looks at Iris's hands, her eyes.

"There's cooking to be done. Steaks to be carved, vegetables to be cut, pots to stir, dishes to wash. We could use an extra pair of hands behind the bar, or waiting the tables. There's always floors to be mopped and tables to be wiped, shelves to be dusted, rooms to be freshened up. Things break and need to be fixed sometimes, if you're good with that. And Charlie comes by with supplies every week or so. You can help unload, though I suspect your werewolf here might be better at the heavy lifting.

"I don't have much to pay you with," continues the knitting woman. "You can keep your tips, of course, though you oughta know the customers pay with all sorts of things around here." She hikes a work-roughened thumb over her shoulder. There's an impressive rack of antlers over the hearth, the points dripping with necklaces, charms, bracelets, rings. Atop the mantle, all manner of whatsits: furs and smoked meats, sure, but also odder things: fine china, wristwatches, a handful of unfamiliar nuts, a vase of flowers, a set of beats headphones surrendered by some hip youngster.

"I won't charge for room, board and meals," she continues. "And I suppose if you could always tell Charlie if you needed something special."

Iris Dahlstrom

Iris, hearing all that, looks up at Coll. They haven't been married twelve hours yet but she's trying to ask him, telepathically it seems, what he thinks.

And if he can hear her -- telepathically of course -- it seems like this sounds all right to her. This could work. She wouldn't mind all that. She squeezes his hand, but doesn't answer the woman herself. After all: he has a telepathic question to answer.

Coll MacCulloch

Well, Iris, sorry to disappoint, but Coll has not evolved telepathy. He has, however, somehow through his twenty-some-odd-years gathered some amount of perceptiveness. He knows to look at her when she squeezes his hand. He understands, at least partly, the look she gives him.

And he squeezes her hand back. "I think we can manage any o' tha' 'tween the both o' us," he says quietly. "We can help out where we're needed 'til we find a niche amongst the rest o' the folks 'ere."

Iris Dahlstrom

Iris smiles at him. Between the both of them -- though he can't say the words correctly at all -- they can manage any of that. And it isn't much to ask. Loading and unloading. Carving meat, chopping vegetables, tending bar, waiting tables, cleaning up. Fixing things that break. Their tips may or may not include animal pelts and skulls, jewelry, meat, gilded teacups. Iris has taken similar things before as payment. And truth be told, room and board is plenty.

She looks back to the knitting woman and gives her a nod. "It sounds like a deal," she says.

Coll MacCulloch

The knitting woman nods, blunt but not quite curt. "You can have your pick of the empty rooms upstairs. Cook's got one, Joe behind the bar's got one, I've got one, and we keep one for Charlie in case he wants a good night's sleep before he heads back out. Still plenty left. We don't clock hours here and no one's going to tell you what needs to be done. Just look around. When you're settled in, you can set yourselves to whatever you think ought to be tended to."

She returns her attention to her knitting. The rhythm of the needles resumes -- then pauses. She looks up again. Gives a small, faint smile.

"It's good to have a little more help around the place. The knitting keeps me so busy."

And that's it, really. No questions about who they are, where or when they're from, why they want to stay. No comment on where they really were, what's out there, where the path back to their world -- or perhaps their worlds, if they don't come from the same one -- might lie. Just a few words. A verbal deal, on their honor and on their word, as informal as their wedding vows.

Iris Dahlstrom

They never ask her name. Truthfully, Iris is wary to know it. She wonders if Cook is a woman, because if she's the only one around here other than Knitting Lady then she may just get a divorce, she's had quite enough of being the only woman for miles. She has a feeling that the knitting woman isn't always right there but can always, if you're looking for her, be found.

She reflects for a moment on what has become of her life in the last twelve hours, but really: what has changed that wasn't already in transition? She did not have a people or a place; now she has both. She wonders if she'll ever see her harried mother or her estranged sister again, or if one of her old boys will walk through the door one night and remember her. She wonders a lot of things, and then

she just needs to know.

"Let's go get some of my things from the truck," she says quietly to Coll, looking to the door and then back to his eyes.

Coll MacCulloch

That makes Coll nervous. It makes him nervous, even though -- let's be honest -- if he couldn't ever walk out that door, if simply stepping out into fresh air would make him disappear back to whatever life or afterlife he came from, he'd need a divorce too. He's a wolf. He's a son of stag. Some things are necessary: love and passion and a good brawl, a good story, a good fire, a good strong drink. A song under the stars. Howling at the moon.

Still: nervous. And wary. And his hand in hers squeezing, holding tight. He asks the knitting woman: "Wha' happens if we walk out th' door?"

She doesn't look up. She smiles, wry.

"Guess you'll just have to find out yourself, won't you, boy-o?"

Iris Dahlstrom

You cannot ask either of them to stay under this roof for the rest of their lives, or non-lives, whatever they have now. No air, no light, no moon, no running, no hunting, no driving along a dark road for miles, nothing outside of these four walls and the roof. She, despite her wonky eggs that will never develop into babies, likes to make things grow and would like to learn how to garden, because she's never stayed in one place long enough to raise plants. He needs the moonlight, and not just through a window. He needs the air. He needs the night, even the nights that he'll spend out of her arms, keeping her bed and her body warm.

Before they go any further, Iris wants to know. She doesn't want to build a life with him here and then, one day, walk outside and find nothing. Find him gone. They are holding each other's hand tight now, as the woman tells them -- smiling, and smiling wry -- they should find out. They have to find out.

Iris looks up at Coll. And then, without another word, she turns and starts walking over to the door. When they get to it, she reaches for the handle, and looks over at Coll. This time she doesn't ask him to read her mind.

"Are you ready, sweetheart?" she asks him.

Coll MacCulloch

He is staring ahead when she asks him that. Looking at the heavy door, its heavy hinges. Its heavy brass handle and fittings. She can see his throat move as he swallows.

He looks at her. "No' really," he admits, and then lifts her hand to his mouth. Presses a tight kiss to her knuckles. "Let's find out anyway."

His hand covers hers on the handle. And then they open the door.

Iris Dahlstrom

Sometimes she looks at him and he seems so young. Funny to say that when she's been asleep more in his company than awake in it. Funny to say that when she met him just last night, but that is what she thinks. The way he swallows, the way his throat moves: she thinks oh, you boy. It is tender and a bit aching and possessive. She doesn't let go of his hand, gives it a squeeze,

and he looks at her. Kisses her hand. Iris smiles up at him for that, the inherent gallantry and tenderness of the gesture. She doesn't kiss him. She doesn't want to start thinking of it as one last kiss, one more before they are parted forever.

His hand is warm when it covers hers on the heavy handle. Iris tugs, and Coll tugs, and they pull it open together.

--

The light outside is blinding. It dazzles Iris's eyes, makes her lift a hand to shade her brow. She sees her truck and the camper right where she parked it. She smells sweetgrass and dust, smells clean air and the middle of the day. She feels like she's stepped out of one place and into another, one time into another, one world into another. She thinks of getting back in the truck, driving onward. She hurts a bit.

She thinks of Coll, getting naked out of bed to propose to her. Of the way he recited his vows a second time, of how lightly he held her hand while he drew a ring on her finger. She thinks of a dozen such memories, tender and amorous and affectionate and exasperated. So many memories, for such a short time together. Tears come to her eyes.

Perhaps she knows better, but she looks down at her hand. The one that was holding his. And --

--

The light outside is blinding. It dazzles Coll's eyes, all gold and white for a moment before clarity starts to come back. He can smell game on the wind, somewhere distant, calling to him. He can feel bloodlust in his veins again. If he listens carefully, he hears a song somewhere out on the road, urging him onward, or back. So many hunts to go on, so many minions of the Wyrm to slaughter, so many women to seduce. If he looks behind him, he might find just as much as he finds before him.

Perhaps he thinks of Iris. Her fair hair, her bright green eyes, her soft breasts, her wry smiles. Perhaps he thinks of his vows, and what they mean now that he has stepped out of whatever life he used to live, whatever life led him to that tavern. Perhaps he thinks of her. Perhaps he feels something move in his chest, when he does.

Perhaps he knows better, when he looks down at his hand. The one that was holding hers. And --

--

Iris squeezes his hand again, tears in her eyes, a tight, aching little smile on her lips. She's batting her lashes, she's not going to cry, Jesus. She exhales, and it's relief and happiness that is growing so big and so rapid in her chest she thinks she might burst apart from it.

And then she is on him, throwing her arms around his neck and shoulders, leaping off the ground a little bit, hugging him as tightly as she held his hand. Tighter. Kissing him, kissing his face and his brow and his mouth, his neck, anywhere she can reach.

Coll MacCulloch

The sun is bright.

The sun is bright and it is summer, oh, can't you taste it on the air. The smell of flowers in bloom and trees clothed in green; the smell of elk wandering the distant ridge, the smell of rabbits in the tall grass. Coyotes, too, and maybe wild wolves in the forest. Birds nesting, birds flying -- clouds that bring warm rain.

Coll breathes it in. He closes his eyes and he lets it move through him, the warmth of the sun and the warmth of the breeze and the warmth of the life all around him. He feels bloodlust. He feels the call of the road. He knows there are hunts to be chased, Wyrm to be slaughtered, women to be bedded, ales to be quaffed. He knows, and he knows, but god,

sometimes he's tired of it. The emptiness, the repetition of being so very carefree that he is careless, so very careless that he is shiftless, so very shirtless that he is anchorless.

And he tells himself it is okay, it'll be all right if he opens his eyes and his wife of twelve hours is gone; he knew it was a risk, they both did, and so

it's okay if his heart breaks, it's okay if he finds the very memory of her slipping from his mind, it's okay if his eyes adjust and open and he's back where he came from, back in the same world, back on the same path.

He lies; and it's not even a very good story.

--

But:

he opens his eyes. He looks down. And there, right there, is her hand in his. It's the hand he drew the ring on. It's the hand that held his as they both reached for the door.

He laughs aloud -- a surprised little gasp of a laugh. He can't help it. He squeezes her hand and he'd kiss it again, but then she is turning to him and flinging herself into his waiting arms; he is wrapping those long lean arms around her and spinning her in two wild spirals, her trailing feet flying up, her hair golden in the light. She hugs him so tightly; he holds her so tight. They are kissing again, showering kisses on each other.

Her heart wants to burst with relief and happiness. He thinks he might be physically aglow with joy. He thinks Gaia is kind after all: she must be, mustn't she, to set two wandering souls on the path they took, to bring two kind and bright but -- let's admit it -- slightly tired, slightly careworn, slightly raw souls together like this. To let them meet and laugh and love and wed, and to let them have each other. Here, in this little pocket of reality, this little waystation in the storm. Gaia must be kind.

Even when he's done spinning her around and around, Coll holds on to Iris. He holds her for a very long time in that warm summer sun. Through the open doorway, the knitting woman sends them a wry, fond glance. She smiles. She understands.

--

They get Iris's things out of her truck. Coll proves he can, in fact, haul things. He carries her things in, and she doesn't have very much but really: he has less. He has his battered wallet and his dented phone and his skateboard and a key on an old chain that opens a tiny little hovel of an apartment that contained a few changes of clothes and maybe some microwaveable dinners. He supposes he'll be evicted now, and doesn't care.

They find a room upstairs that has a tub. She puts her clothes away and he puts her toiletries in the bathroom. He opens the windows while she unpacks the rest of her things. She pins back the drapes. He makes a note to ask Charlie to bring him a few changes of clothes the next time he comes in. She stashes his skateboard under the bed. He 'borrows' that vase of flowers from the mantle downstairs and puts it on her nightstand. She sweeps the dust from the windowsill,

and he wraps his arms around her middle because of the way she looks stretching up like that,

and she turns and slides her arms around him, rag forgotten in hand.

--

It's not always summer, of course. Time is a little more fluid here. Sometimes the day stretches forever. Sometimes the nights, particularly when the guests are many, go on forever and ever and no one ever feels sleepy. Sometimes the sun rises on a summer day and the day ends in a gentle, quiet snow. Sometimes it pours out there. Sometimes the wind combs all the wildgrass flat.

And that grass -- lush and green, sprinkled with wildflowers. A treeline in the distance, a thick forest full of game. A distant stream running into a river; a river pouring from the mountains on the horizon.

There's a world out there. It's a small and quiet one, free of those overarching shadows of the War. It's a fantastical and mysterious one, where the farther they go, the stranger it gets. There's a little village with a general store that always seems stocked with what they're looking for. There's a little church that seems to celebrate whatever faith they need most. There are people who come every day or every night to work in the inn, though they don't seem to live there. There's a hunting lodge deep in the forest where Coll sometimes runs into other men, other wolves, other hunters from other worlds. There's a pale woman in white who only wanders the road on misty full-moon nights, and there's a tower with some mysterious master, a warlock or a wizard, and there's a mist that hides a lake that might just hide a legendary sword, and -- anything, everything, all the legends and dreams and thoughts that come to mind: there's the sense that they just might be out there, if only they looked far enough, wandered long enough.

The inn, though. That's the keystone, the axis, the center and the constant. The inn, and its road: that hard-packed dirt road stretching both ways into the distance, all but empty during the days but busy, so busy every night. Bringing to their door the explorers and the curious, the lost souls and the simply lost, the warrior-poets on their way past the Western Sea to the Homelands, the mighty wolves on their way back to Valhalla. Occasionally Iris meets one of her boys, seeking comfort and company or seeking the way to the Homelands. Occasionally Coll meets one of his battle-brothers. More often, they meet strangers, wanderers, new friends, old souls.

They help keep the lights burning. They keep the fires hot. They keep the stew warm, the beer cold, the walls strong, the garden kept. They bicker. They laugh. She calls him Irish and he insists that he is not, and she tells him it doesn't matter because he has terrible diction. He calls her a scold, she calls him a grump. Sometimes they argue, and sometimes they go to bed angry. Sometimes she throws rags at him. Sometimes he brings her flowers from the garden, weaves them into circlets for her hair. Sometimes,

most times,

most every night,

they retire together to their little room. They shut the door and close the drapes and wash up and undress, and he wraps his arms around her in their bed, and she laces her fingers with his. They never do get real wedding rings, but sometimes, when she holds his hand like that, he thinks he can feel one there all the same.

A band around his finger. A string from his heart to hers.

waystations in the storm.

Coll MacCulloch

She is not the first to wake. Which means he must be. Which means at some point latelatelatelate in the morning, if clocks even run here, Coll sort of chokes on a snore (because yes, Iris, your new husband snores, particularly after too much sex and scotch) and startles awake.

He does stink. They're both pretty gross. Light is crashing in through the unblinded window, lighting up the cozy little room, lighting up the bed and the dresser and the mirror and the rug and the hardwood beneath the rug and -- all of it. He opens his eyes and the ceiling is lit simply by all the light bouncing off all the other surfaces in the room. He stirs, he stretches, he opens his mouth in a truly gargantuan yawn, and then he settles his arm around Iris. Which is to say, he flops it around her shoulders, heavy and affectionate.

"G'morn, missus," he murmurs.

Iris Dahlstrom

Iris snores a little, later in the morning. Not badly, not like a moose broke into the house and has a sinus infection, but she snorts a few times, and rolls over, and maybe they wake each other up and maybe they don't. He chokes on one, though, while she doesn't. She just flops on a pillow, her mouth open, her hair a mess, her neck at a slightly uncomfortable-looking angle.

The room, in daylight, has a bit of a Bed and Breakfast air about it. The pillow shams turn out to have a bit of a ruffle. The cover over their bed is a quilt. The bathroom that Iris snuck off to last night -- and sometime during the middle of the night, if we're honest -- is tiny and cramped. There is a rug on the floor beneath the bed made of braided rags and bits of leftover fabric from aforementioned quilt. It is quite cozy, and homey, and homely.

Coll yawns, and flops, and wakes up Iris, whose ring is smudged and there happens to be a bit of ball point pen ink on her cheek now. So there. A faint impression of a diamond, smeared on her jawline, from when she pillowed her face on her hand for a while.

She yawns, too, rolling over, kicking his feet a little while she tries to straighten her legs and stretch, stretch, aaah. She doesn't open her eyes. "Fuck morning," she mutters back to him, looping her arms around his waist.

Coll MacCulloch

"Fuck mornin'," he agrees happily. She wraps her arms around his waist under the covers. He pulls the pillow out from under his head, fluffs it himself -- which is to say, shakes it several times in midair, one-handed -- and stuffed it back under. " 'Course, 'tis almos' noon."

The room is bright and cozy and homey and homely. Coll loves it. Coll loves many things like this: quickly, utterly, soul-surrenderingly. He loves the room and he loves the inn and he still wants to be a groundskeeper here forever dammit but he doesn't want to bring it up again because sad. He stretches his legs under the covers, wriggling one out: a bare and big-boned foot at the far end of the bed. He's a tall lad, more lanky and long-boned rather than ripped, or cut, or massive, or whatever terminology might best describe a full-moon of, say, Iris's tribe.

"Do ye wan' tae keep sleepin'?" he asks after a moment. "I will hush up if ye do."

Iris Dahlstrom

It's important in relationships, especially in marriage, that couples can learn to let go of the little things if they can manage to come to terms on the big things. Family. Childrearing. Money. Religion or lack thereof. They don't have to agree; they just have to be at peace with the differences where they find them. One of those big things that a married couple simply must agree on is whether or not mornings can go fuck themselves.

On family, Coll and Iris seem to agree: theirs aren't much to speak of.

On childrearing, they agree that she will not be bearing him any and if they want to adopt, eh, sure, why not.

On money, neither of them have any. Easy.

On religion, they share one almost by default but don't worry much for typical morality.

And mornings can go fuck themselves, so it seems that they will have a blissful eternity together. Or a blissful however-long-until-they-leave.

--

Iris rubs her legs against his. She yawns again, softly, snuggling with him far longer than she needs to or he needs to. No one comes to them with a wake-up call or a basket of freshly-baked pastries, because this isn't really a bed and breakfast. No one bothers them at all, because this isn't really an inn. The dead stop here. People from shifted timelines come together here. Coll and Iris come together here. He asks her if she wants to sleep some more. He'll shut up.

"I'll tell you if I want you to shut up," she says fondly, almost tenderly. Her eyes open slowly after a while. She looks up at him, messy hair and all. Smiles a little, gently. "I'm thinking... maybe we should get clean, and get dressed, and..."

leave. It was all silly drunken nonsense. They're not married. God, did he really think they were married? And won't she laugh, won't she laugh...

"...just see if they maybe have some jobs here," she says, a little tentatively, reaching up and touching his face, stroking his jaw with her left hand, her smeared diamond ring. "We could just live in a room like this, maybe this one. I don't need much space," since she's never had much at all. Her thumb moves over his chin, his lower lip. "I'm not much of a cook but I can clean and pour beer, if that's all that's needed."

Coll MacCulloch

Coll is a bit hungry, really. His stomach is gnawing a bit and he's thinking idly that maybe they can go downstairs and see if there's maybe some breakfast to be found. Maybe some eggs and beans and ham and maybe even some black sausage. Maybe some oatmeal for his wife, his missus, his ol' lady. He'd suggest it, but he thinks maybe then she'd suggest leaving, and

when she starts to speak his eyes open. His brow furrows. He knows what's coming. Get clean. Get dressed. Go back to the world. His arm tightens around her, as though by holding her closer he might cheat the fates. He's already shaking his head because they are married, they have the smudged little rings to prove it, and even if she laughs he'll be ever so serious, ever so serious and ever so stubborn and ever so heartbroken at least about this, because

it is real. It does matter.

--

Except that's not what she says. She says: see if they maybe have some jobs here. And he's so startled. He turns his head, he raises it right off the pillow and stares. In daylight they can see each other's eyes again, and his are green and so are hers, and they'll never have strawberry-blond biological kids with green eyes, but damned if they don't have the genes for it. She is touching his face and he is grabbing her hand, pressing it quick and firm to his lips, kissing her knuckles.

"Do ye mean tha'?" he whispers. "Stayin' here, you an' I? Doon't tease me, Iris, 'tis a cruel thing t' do."

Iris Dahlstrom

"I'm not teasing you, dumbass," she whispers, ever so fondly, as he's kissing her hand and looking at her like clouds are parting, suns are shining, rainbows are curving above them. Aching for it to be real, terrified it won't be.

Iris quietly, almost hesitantly, wraps her hand around his. "I suppose that means you'd liked to. Stay here. I think --" she pauses, and furrows her brow. "Something tells me they'd let us stay. If we wanted to."

Coll MacCulloch

"O' course I wan' tae stay," Coll says, his hand firming their grip. "Iris, I ha' thought o' stayin' every five minutes since it firs' popped intae m' head las' nigh'.

"I wan' tae stay. I woul' love tae stay here, with you. I doon't ha' anywhere better tae be an'... I almos' think mayhaps I am meant tae be here. With you. Live in this room, help out under this roof. You can clean an' pour beer an' I can ... well, I can probably learn tae make an omelette an' stir a pot. Trim hedges an' paint walls an' ... whatever they migh' need. We can bicker an' argue an' fuck like jackrabbits tae make up, an' we can make this place jus' a litt'le more welcomin' tae whatever lost souls migh' wander this way, afore they move on tae wherever it is they may be goin'."

He winds down. He settles, turning onto his side, looking at her from inches away.

"I wan' tae stay," he repeats softly.

Iris Dahlstrom

Oh, he has plans. He's planned out their little life here the way some women plan their weddings. There's an eagerness to it that she finds totally weird and a little endearing. Iris laughs softly at him. He's thought of almost nothing else since he first thought of it: being a groundskeeper here. Her tending bar or cooking or cleaning or whatever. Living in the background of the strange moments that people find themselves in: an Ahroun picking up dinner for his mate and pups, a runaway Kinswoman on an endless road, vampires from ancient days or modern days not knowing the difference, shapeshifters with shadowed eyes and striped pelts, enchanting fae, even green-skinned orcs. Plenty of ghosts, having a moment of life before they fade again.

Iris wonders. She wonders, and wonders, if either of them have already died. She wonders if that's why she has such a strong feeling that they'd be allowed to stay. But she doesn't feel dead. She has no memory of anything that might kill her happening to her. All she remembers is driving for a long time, and coming here to get a bite to eat and see if there were any No Experience Necessary jobs being advertised somewhere.

She exhales softly. "Let's stay, then," she tells him, all in a rush like she's afraid it will vanish if she doesn't say it quick. "Let's stay."

Coll MacCulloch

And Coll breaks into a grin. He grins like he can't hold it back, which is appropriate: because he can't. It's one of those quick-flashing grins of his, charming, brilliant. Only it's more, it's through-and-through, it's happiness that goes right down to the bottom. Not that Coll has much in the way of mysterious depths or murky shadows. He's face value. He's honest and genuine and uncomplicated. It's not hard to see to that bottom: see the colorful, smooth-edged stones that make up the riverbed of his soul.

"All righ'," he whispers, and puts his hands on her face, and kisses her quick and soft on the mouth. That grin breaks forth again, almost before he can finish kissing her. He echoes, "Let's stay."

Iris Dahlstrom

There isn't much complicatedness to either of them, really. She doesn't play much close to the vest: she told him after what, one drink, that she was a retired whore. She cared about all those Fenrir she followed around; she cares about him now. It's not as quickly flashing and grinning and boisterous as him, but then again: she's older than he is. The surface can be still, yet still clear enough for you to see the bottom.

They kiss, quick and small and smiling. She smiles back at him. "Okay."

A moment, too quick, passes.

"We have to shower," she says, still smiling fondly at him, bangs in her eyes. "You smell like ass, sweetheart."

Coll MacCulloch

Actually, if Iris asks Coll, he might recall -- erroneously or otherwise -- that she told him about her colorful past after a diet coke. With chipped ice. Which was the first drink he bought her, though no money actually changed hands. He bought them both quite a few drinks after that, and it all went on some mystical tab, which was perhaps no more or less than an accounting of whatever wealth he imagined he had.

Not a lot, that. But it's okay. They're both poor. Just like they're both green-eyed, just like they are neither of them morning people, just like their families aren't terribly pleasant, just like they don't mind if they can't have kids.

He blurts a laugh as she tells him just what she thinks of his manly stink. He kisses her again, more soundly this time, and then he pushes up on his hands and climbs over her and clambers bare-assed out of bed. He's quite fair, actually, with the sort of skin that easily flushes pink through the pale. On the way to the bathroom he kicks some of their clothes aside. Briefly, he wonders how things like that actually work here. Clothes, soap, food, basic supplies. Perhaps they're restocked when a lost-soul trucker rolls through. Perhaps traveling flea markets stop here.

It doesn't warrant too much thought, he decides. Stooping down to pick up her bra, he leaves it atop the dresser, then turns at the bathroom door.

"Well, are ye comin', Missus Dahlstrom?"

Iris Dahlstrom

When he kisses her again, she fakes a gag, turning her head and sputtering. "Oh god," she pants, "your breath is even worse."

Hers isn't great either. But she's a girl and god help him if he complains about her breath or the way she smells when the way she smells is 99% his fault, spreading his man-stink all over her and coming inside of her like he did, of course it's his fault he'd better not complain.

But regardless: her breath stinks, too.

Coll hops up out of bed. Iris is a moment after him, flinging bedsheets aside, yawning and stretching and scratching an itch on her back, arms all twisted. She moves more slowly, but she does move, striding along after him. She thinks about the same thing he does, in a sense: but she thinks of her truck and her camper, her worldly possessions, if she still has them, if they still exist. She follows him, patting his butt fondly when he asks if she's coming. "I'm peeing first," she tells him, in no uncertain terms.

Coll MacCulloch

She earns herself a sidelong grin with that pat on the ass. It spreads as she informs him of her bodily activities. "By all means," Coll says, magnanimous, turning on his heel at the bathroom door to wait just outside. They are, after all, newlyweds. That level of familiarity comes later.

She shuts the door or she doesn't. Either way, he faces the other way -- the window, outside which he can see blue sky, green grass. A sort of nondescript road, unpaved but hard-packed, with no signs or lightposts or -- anything, really, that could give him some hint of where they were, what era, what time, what universe. When she finishes and he hears the toilet flush, he knocks on the doorframe and peers cautiously in.

"Ye migh' want tae hop in the bath firs'," he warns. "I've got tae have a leak, too."

Iris Dahlstrom

Yes, that sort of familiarity will come later. At least with the two of them. At least after the first time she gets so drunk he has to hold her hair back and she cries about throwing up in front of him or something. At least until after she just can't be fucked to close the door while she pees. They are newlyweds, though. This time, they close the door, and Iris lets him know he can come in when she turns on the shower, which is a tiny closet, a box, barely fit for one person, much less two.

"Go ahead," she tells him, because she's stepping into the box-shower, into the hot water. "But if you flush I'm going to put arsenic in your coffee."

Coll MacCulloch

"Go righ' ahead," Coll dismisses, blithe as fuck, "a Fiann cannae die from poison, o' the tribe would'hae drunk itself tae death long ago."

At least he waits until she's in the shower-box before he lifts the toilet seat(!) and takes a stand. Adds, "However, I will, on account o' you bein' my lawfully-wedded-wife an' myself bein' a sof'hearted lover, give ye warnin' afore I flush. Speakin' o' which, gorgeous, I am about tae flush."

FLUSH.

Iris Dahlstrom

The shower is running.

Her husband takes a leak. She doesn't care. She's seen plenty of literal pissing contests.

Then he flushes.

Iris screams. "YOU LIMEY SON OF A BITCH."

Coll MacCulloch

Coll throws back his head and roars with laughter.

Iris Dahlstrom

The shower door opens. And there is his bride, naked. There's that scar on her left side where something cut, something nearly went through her heart but not quite, skimmed her ribcage instead. There's the tattoo on her ankle, a little cluster of forget-me-nots. She's soaking wet and now she's glaring at him from in there, naked and drenched and furious.

"I'm.

"Going.

"To kill you."

Coll MacCulloch

Coll is still laughing. He dissolves into bellows of laughter all over again at the site of her, though he does -- give him credit for this much -- at least try to climb into the little shower-box and wrap his arms around her.

"Oh, I am sorry!" he exclaims, or perhaps merely claims. "I truly am, love. 'tis only tha' I dinnae wan' tae leave a pot o' piss steamin' outside. Here," he rubs her arms briskly, and then gathers her close, and then rubs her back unless of course she slaps him or shoves him or punches him in the jaw, "let's get ye warmed up."

Iris Dahlstrom

He's got his big dumb penis out. She thinks he's absurd and she's going to kill him she TOLD HIM NOT TO FLUSH and there he goes flushing and COULD IT NOT HAVE WAITED TIL WE HAD A NICE HOT SHOWER TOGETHER, JESUS CHRIST,

which is what she's yelling at him as she jumps on him, even as he's entering the shower and wrapping her up in his arms. Iris just smacks his chest and shoulders with her hands. At least she doesn't ball those hands into fists or curl them into scratchy claws, which she would, if she were really that mad.

"You're such an asshole," she mutters, as the water starts pouring over both of them, recalibrating after his stupid stupid stupid flushing. This is her answer to all his flagrant apologies, his talk of steaming pots of piss, while he tries to warm her up. She smacks him a bit anyway but lets him. Grumps at him. "I'm going to put arsenic in your food," she threatens again, but really,

where is she going to get a hold of arsenic in a place like this?

--

They shower. Actually: they stand there in the warm water for a long time, close together because they have no other choice. Turning with her back to his chest for a while, too, while she washes her face and he kisses her neck, touches her breasts, maybe grows hard against her perfectly plump little derriere, maybe

it grows from there into something else, something in the style of jackrabbits.

But even if not: they shower. Warm and clean, for the first time in at least two days for both of them, most likely. And she's smiling at him as he whispers sweet nothings in her ear about her breasts or bottom or her eyes or hair, tells her how beautiful she is, which, really,

is his best shot to not get poisoned.

--

Here is the truth of the matter: their rings wash off. The ink comes off her face when he tells her about it. Washing their hands smears and smudges and erases those rings, but at this point, they are both rather aware: this is real. Rings or no rings. They're married. And maybe that means something in itself: that they are married not just with their silly rings, but that they are married even when those rings fade away, are scrubbed away.

Maybe it means something. Maybe it's just the two of them, not caring. She kisses him under the water, once or twice or three times. Snuggles him in that tiny box of a shower. Bemoans, later,

"I'm so hungry. What kind of a husband lets his wife go hungry like this? We're getting a divorce,"

which is, at very least, a gentler argument than I'M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU.

Coll MacCulloch

Coll humbly weathers the tiny storm of her smacking hands, laughing still, turning his head away when an errant hand nearly grazes his nose. He keeps rubbing her arms, her back. He keeps pulling her closer, and closer, and nearer,

until she's done smacking him, until she's muttering about what an asshole he is and how much rat poison she was going to put in his food,

and he's leaning across the gap and kissing her.

--

They shower:

they stand there for a long time, and they share the tiny space, and they reach around each other and have to be careful not to elbow each other in the face as they wash. Perhaps later, Coll thinks, they'll have a look at the other rooms. It's not that he wants something grandiose or luxurious. He wants his missus to have the best, of course, but more than that he wants her to have what makes her happy. He has a suspicion -- as briefly as he's known her -- that she doesn't want the biggest, the grandest, the most luxurious, the richest.

She said it herself. She doesn't have a lot of stuff. She just needs a little room to tuck things away. Some work to keep her busy. Maybe the gossip and conversation of strangers from time to time. Maybe even him, Coll, big dumb lad that he is, to keep her warm at night.

So. Maybe they'll have a look around. Maybe they'll switch rooms or maybe they won't. It'd be nice to maybe have a bathtub, but then: it wouldn't be a dealbreaker if they didn't. Very little would break their tender little deal here, the almost laughably, almost heartbreakingly classical vows they gave each other in the darkness, the rings they drew on each other's fingers to mark the occasion, and the rings that they washed away inadvertently in the morning without ever washing away what they'd promised each other in the night.

--

And they shower:

warm and clean now, scrubbed smooth after two or more days without. She rests with her back to his chest. He kisses her neck. He touches her breasts. Maybe there's something in the style of jackrabbits. Maybe her back to the tile, his hands on her ass; her hands holding him by the shoulders and by his wet hair. Maybe his mouth at her neck, moaning. Maybe her mouth eating at his. Maybe all these things,

or maybe none of them. Maybe they just stand together and drowse together, lazy, fond, infatuated; those seeds of love growing from different directions. Real love takes time. Perhaps he's too young to know that, and perhaps she's too wry and sardonic, but they have time now to learn it. They're in no hurry.

--

He laughs as she threatens divorce. He lifts his head from where he's bowed his lips to her shoulder. He kisses her cheek, and then he unwinds his arms, and there's a bit of shuffling around to turn in that tiny space. He cranks the water off. Something to be said for this cozy, aging inn: the water pressure is fantastic. They hear the pipes thud in the walls. He thinks to himself maybe one day he'll have to fix a leak somewhere in the walls; absurdly, the thought makes him happy.

"Let's get dressed an' go doownstairs," he says, pushing the door of the box-shower open. "Talk tae th' management about stayin' here. I'm sure they'll let me fix ye some eggs. Or tha' disgustin' oatmeal ye were threatenin' tae eat las' nigh'."

Iris Dahlstrom

And so what if they fuck in that tiny box of a shower and nearly fall against the door and almost tumble out of it onto the hard floor? They're newlyweds and she's laughing, soaking wet and slippery from half-rinsed soap and she can't stop giggling. They're newlyweds, so what if she puts her hands on the tile and he stands behind her and so what if water is pouring all over them while they're doing it again. Why not?

He thinks about other rooms; Iris is not opposed to the idea. Ultimately, she doesn't have very discerning standards. This is as good as any other, this is fine, more wouldn't suck, less wouldn't suck either. A place to lay her head, work for her hands, warmth for the night. She wouldn't mind staying here because of the people passing through, strange as they might be, and what their lives might be like. She thinks she could serve ale to an orc and blood to a vampire; she has been a waystation in the storm for most of her life. She might be done with one way of being that, but

here is another.

--

The towels are soft but a little old, a little thin, oft-washed. They are a dusky pink color. Maybe they'll replace them, if they scrape together some money. Maybe Iris has some towels in her camper. Maybe they'll just use those dusty-rose colored towels until they get holes in them, wear them out until they're just rags for dusting, rags Iris throws at Coll if he doesn't help her keep their little abode clean, rags he'll use when they work on her truck.

For now they are towels, soft, no holes yet, no fringed edges from use. They wrap around hair and bodies and scuff off water from their newly cleaned skins, and Iris just finger-combs her hair and starts braiding it wet, a surprisingly rapid rope of hair that she creates by touch alone while her towel hangs, tucked around her breasts. He says he wants to cook her some eggs. She smirks as he talks about disgusting oatmeal.

"Oatmeal is healthy," she insists, which doesn't mean that eggs aren't. "Lots of fiber, I think."

She finds a hair tie somewhere, or a bit of string, and ties off her braid, looking quite Fenrir at the moment, glancing in a mirror. "You can make me some eggs, though. And toast." She's fussing a bit at her hair, frowning in the mirror. "Definitely coffee. Maybe while you're cooking I'll talk to them about us staying on."

Coll MacCulloch

A waystation in the storm.

It's exactly what Iris was. Before. And now too -- even last night, following her up the stairs -- Coll felt it. Intuited it. It is in her nature; something warm and welcoming, something tender beneath the wryness of her smile, the bite of her wit. It's what she's good at and, perhaps, what she enjoys. She's done with one way of being that, but here is another, and

it's one that he would not mind sharing with her. He, Fianna-hearted, Stag-blooded, wouldn't mind at all.

--

He has a towel around his waist. She has one around her breasts. He follows her out, and she goes to stand in front of the mirror. He stands over her shoulder, quite a bit taller now that they're both in bare feet, wrapping his arms around her middle and kissing her temple until he has to let go because she is braiding her hair.

He pulls up a chair, then. Squeezes himself between her and the mirror, seated so he's out of her way. Well. Sort of out of her way. He looks up at her, watching fascinated as her fingers rapidly and practicedly turn loose hair into a braid. They talk about breakfast. He tugs playfully, distractedly at her towel; puts his hands on her hips through the thinning terrycloth; leans forward to kiss her between her breasts.

"Ye're goin' tae ha' tae tell me about those scars someday," he says, smiling, "especially if there's a glorious tale behind 'em. Though, if the tale's somethin' harrowin' ye'd rather forget, we won't speak o' it."

Eggs, then. Toast and coffee. He has wound his arms around her then: lower back, upper thighs. He pulls her to stand between his thighs, her belly to his chest, the edge of his towel against her knees.

"Eggs an' toast." He nips at her towel. Tugs the tucked edge a little with his teeth. "Will do. Though," oh, he's found a bit of skin: he kisses that bit of skin and noses the edges of her towel aside, hunting for more, "I ha' tae admit, if ye donnae drag me out o' this room soon I migh' jus' forget why we're s'pposed tae go doownstairs."

Iris Dahlstrom

As soon as they're out of the shower, he's hugging and nuzzling at her, pawing at her, and Iris just keeps braiding her hair, ignoring him, tolerating his snuggling at first. He smooches her head as she braids; she focuses on the mirror while he tugs at her towel, touches her hips, pulls her closer, kisses that little dip between her breasts.

Iris is rather patient. She's quite relaxed as he touches on her, like he's unable to stop himself. Asks about her scars and she just smirks a little, wryly, looking down at him. "I'm no skald," she says. "But one of these nights I'll do my best." And leans over, hands behind her head mid-braid, to kiss the side of his forehead. He doesn't upset her.

She's finishing that braid while he's trying to get her towel off. Playfully. If he wanted it off he wouldn't pretend to struggle; it would just slide right off at the first tug. And frankly, that is what happens when he really starts biting and nuzzling at the fold that keeps it closed. The thin fabric is unwinding, unraveling, falling away as he's cautioning her -- oh, dear -- that if she doesn't drag him downstairs they're gonna fuck again.

Only that's not what he says. He'll forget. Iris gives him a wry look. "You'll forget until I start trying to eat your hand," she says, and even though her towel has done gone falled right to the floor, leaving her bare-ass naked in front of the mirror, she doesn't slide onto his lap and proceed to postpone breakfast a bit longer. She doesn't hop on for another round. She does, however, finish her braid and then take her hands down and reach over to him, putting her hands on his face and bending to kiss his mouth.

"After breakfast," she says quietly, promising.

Coll MacCulloch

Ah yes. The towel falls away. It comes away, as one imagines it must, because he is nuzzling it and nipping at it and biting it and dragging it, and when the little tuck-knot comes undone Coll ends up with the towel in his teeth, hanging down his chin and chest. He grins up at her. She puts her hands on his face. He lets that towel drop to the floor, lifts his head to receive her.

Coll smiles into that kiss. He stands into that kiss, rising to his feet. His body brushes hers. Then it presses flush to hers, skin to bare skin, his towel the only flimsy barrier. His hands are at her waist, pulling her closer. It seems nearly inevitable that he'll kiss her and kiss her and kiss her and lose his towel and lift her up and park her on his dick for another go-around.

But say this for Coll, accommodating lad that he is: he may be a bit boorish, he may flush the toilet just to make her shriek, he may have snored most the night and flopped his long limbs all about the bed, but he does, against all odds, know how to respect a lady. He knows how to respect a no. He kisses her, and kisses her, and kisses her,

but then he lets her go, smiling down at her now, crooked and sort of smug, like he's just so proud of himself for tugging that towel away, for getting her to acquiesce to more entertainment after breakfast, for landing such a lovely bride in the first place.

"All righ'," he agrees. "I hope ye knoow I'll be holdin' ye tae your promises."

Iris Dahlstrom

That thin fabric barrier between their bodies doesn't last through the kissing. Iris does like kissing him, and kissing him, and so she reaches and gives one decisive tug and his towel drops in a damp heap to the floor as well. She steps forward while he's kissing her, letting him feel her heat, her sex, her breasts, her warm soft delightful body up against his, which is still not a yes, which he learns if his hands start wandering. He has quite a nice body, she thinks. She likes feeling it against her own.

But they kiss, and kiss, and kiss, and she smiles as she draws back, his hands on her waist and her hands on his waist and their bodies naked and together like they were all night. She thinks maybe they should be nudists at home, for the most part. At least for the first... however long they have. Weeks, days, what-have-you. Lovely.

"You'll be holding me to something else, I think," she quips, and steps away, turning from him, strolling back into the bedroom to find some of her clothes to put on. She doesn't bother with panties under her little dress; she does put on her bra, looks for her sweater, her sandals.

Coll MacCulloch

Oh he smirks at that. He smirks and he has the good sense not to spoil a good quip by making it too obvious. She starts collecting her clothes, and thus so does he: picking jeans up off the ground and shaking them out, stepping into them, and --

-- well, that's it, actually. Apparently he does not intend to put anything else on.

Iris Dahlstrom

They are at the door before she notices. She is not wearing anything beneath her rather thin dress, her hair is braided, she's foregone the (fake) pearls for now, she has stepped into sandals. And he is barefoot and shirtless and boxer-less and Iris turns around and sees him like that.

She looks him up and down, a tiny furrow of consternation between her brows.

She looks up at him with an inhale, exasperated, about to tell him to go get dressed the rest of the way right this second or they'll never hire you I'll just tell them not to hire you. She exhales instead, shakes her head, and reaches up, putting her hand on the back of his neck.

Pulls him down. "Okay," she mutters, as though she's annoyed, kissing him again, kicking the half-open door behind her so it closes again.

Coll MacCulloch

If this were a sitcom Coll would flail comically and perhaps yelp whoa--! right before getting mauled. This not being a sitcom, and Coll having slightly more sense than a rock, he sees the look in her eyes. He has time for a wide, wild, reckless grin, and then his grin is lost in that kiss, and then the door bangs shut and

a moment later her back hits the door and

a moment after that his pants whumpf down to his ankles and her skirt rucks up to her hips and they. are. at it again. His hands wrapped under her thighs, her ankles locked at the small of his back. He quite literally bangs her: bangs her against the door, bangs the door against the frame, they make quite the ruckus, and then they make even more of a ruckus because he starts moaning, he starts groaning, he starts basically yelling against her mouth, these breathless, raw, laughing exultations as they fuck for like the millionth time in the space of about twelve hours.

It's a quick, rough-around-the-edges, imprecise, untutored fuck. It ends the same way it begins, fast and hard and spontaneous and laughing -- oh, he's laughing, panting and laughing and making these shredded sounds when she rides him through the last of his orgasm. He's leaning against her, and leaning her against the wall, and when they're done he drops a kiss on her soft warm sweaty shoulder,

holds her there for a while, close to him, held by him, wrapped all around him.

--

"Mmph," a little later. Stirring, pulling back a little to kiss her again: softer now, savoringly. "Think we oughtae shower again? O' is tha' jus' goin' tae cause th' cycle tae repeat, do ye think?"

Iris Dahlstrom

It was the tugging and nuzzling and smooching and pawing that did it. The way he tried to pull her onto his lap and the way he rose into her kisses like that, stood up to his full height and put his hands on her waist when she was naked. It was the way she founds herself making him naked, too, feeling him starting to harden against her body while his mouth moved on hers. The fact that he decided not to put a shirt on as they headed out to go get themselves some jobs really had nothing to do with it at all.

Just so that's clear. Though it won't be, to him; maybe he'll start walking around like that hoping for repeat performances. And what a tragedy that would be.

He hikes her skirt up and lifts her onto his body, pinning her to the door while he wrestles his pants down. Iris is telling him to be quick, is telling him hurry, like he's not, then she's whimpering and yelping and giving these sharp gaspy little cries while their bodies slap together, her fresh new husband... well, yes. Banging her. She holds onto him, and it's quick and it's riotous and she comes with these deep grinds, whining in her throat and scratching a little at the back of his neck where her hand is still holding him. It's not on purpose. She just digs her nails in, groaning while he's pumping her full of cum again, while she's squirming between his body and the door.

By the end of it she feels rather dizzy. She attributes this to hunger and blames him entirely, whooping softly on her exhale as she lowers her head to his temple. "You bastard," she mutters tenderly, fondly, stroking softly where she dug her nails in as though to soothe him. She snuggles him, hugs him while he holds her to the door.

He asks if they should shower again and she scoffs. "You're gonna end up dehydrated and starved," she informs him, "or I will." Iris pats his shoulder. "Let me down and get me a washcloth, sweetheart."

Coll MacCulloch

Let's just note: Coll does not mind getting scratched in the heat of the moment. Coll, in fact, is rather egged on by this -- panting a gasp when it happens, kissing her so starvedly, fucking her all the more enthusiastically until

until

until they both come, fast and hard and ridiculously good, oh so good, she's not the only one lightheaded in the aftermath; why does she think he's leaning on her like that.

He laughs again, though, when she calls him a bastard. Tender and fond like that, like it's an endearment. She predicts dehydration and starvation! He grins, loosely and crookedly. She pats him on the shoulder: for a job well done, perhaps. A fuck well fucked? He catches his breath as he slides out of her, lifts her, lowers her, sets her down.

"A washcloth," he echoes. "I am positively scand'lized, Missus Dahlstrom."

But he does run and fetch. So there's that: at least she knows he'll be good for running and fetching things in the days-weeks-months-years-however-long-they-have to come. Perhaps with some mock grumbling, perhaps with some actual grousing, but: he'll do it, just as he does it now, pulling his pants up, going to the bathroom, wetting one of those worn-but-clean little washcloths, running it under warm water. Bringing it to her and handing it to her, unembarrassed, knowing what she'll use it for but really: it's just biology. It's just the inevitable aftermath of this sort of pastime.

While she cleans up, he does too: takes a cue from her and gets a washcloth of his own. Scrubs it and wrings it out afterward, tossing it on the bar to dry unless she demands that he put it in the laundry hamper, christ. Then they're finally ready to leave their room. He steps into his shoes, and

before they walk out he holds his hand out for hers.

wedding vows.

Coll MacCulloch

Strange, but Coll would have thought the opposite. Would very likely -- may very well have -- fucked some hot young thing he met at some bar, blind drunk, exactly the way they fucked that first time, athletic and laughing and free-standing. Couldn't imagine fucking a stranger like this, though, so close, so slow, so felt, so intense. This reads as something

more.

He is half in love with her by the time she wraps him up in her arms and legs and takes him into her body. He is most of the way in love with her when she starts to come, when she tells him don't stop don't stop don'tstopdon'tstop in those tiny gasps, those ever-escalating, ever-more-urgent little cries; when she clutches at the lean hardness of his sides and presses her sounds into the knotted hardness of his shoulder and everything about him is spare and lean and hard and everything about her is soft and rose and gold and

oh, the way she turns her head, the way she seems suspended on the threads of her pleasure: he is wholly in love with her then, kissing her neck fervently, kissing her cheek and the corner of her mouth, raining these kisses on her as he moves in her, again, again, grindingly steady, not stopping, not stopping.

It starts to let her back down. He is just hitting his peak. It comes on the heels of hers, one tumbling into the other. He has his arms around her and he squeezes her so tight; he buries his face in her neck and he cries out there, shuddering groans and short-caught grunts, comes into her a second time -- pressed close this time, pressed deep, climaxing in deep-seated waves that flood her somewhere deep inside.

He loosens his arms but a little when it's over. He is heavy atop her, making absolutely no attempt to stir. He attempts only to catch his breath and find his heartbeat again.

Iris Dahlstrom

They are strangers, though. And they are not a camp follower and a soldier. And they have gleefully, athletically had sex in the center of the room. And they are doing this now, this which is different for him in a way that nothing is very different or very new for her. But then, it doesn't need to be. She thinks he's quite good, she feels so fond of him, he's given her quite a treat tonight and she doesn't want to leave yet. She doesn't want to even think, or try to figure out, what she feels about it.

She comes, soaring off some peak like the sun coming up, held in the air by nothing but faith. She feels him kissing her, fucking her still, slowing a bit, grinding into her nice and deep while her orgasm is cresting over her, covering her, keeping her pinned there as surely as his body does. Iris hasn't the faintest idea what is going on in that Stag's heart of his, fey-touched and known even among werewolves for their passion. She hasn't heard it skipping a beat or felt it turn over in his chest; she can't look in his eyes and see that right this moment, at least for now, he is entirely in love with her, and that those kisses really are as adoring as they feel. She can't, because she doesn't know him.

Which, if she let herself think about it, might make her a little sad.

Iris is panting, but she's turning to tell him to go, to tell him to keep going, but he needs no such encouragement. He picks it up again, holding her against his body, hiding his face against her neck while he fucks her. She folds her arms around him. She's muttering to him to let it go, give it to her, telling him that's it, that's it, yes, that's my good man, yes,

and he is letting it go, giving it to her, that's it, yes, he's her good man. Yes.

She doesn't need him to move. Muscular as he is, tall as he is, she doesn't feel crushed. She rubs his back with her hands, smoothing her palms over him. She would murmur to him, but all she can do right now is pant, catching her breath along with him, holding him in her arms and legs and turning to rest her face close to his. They're still technically under the covers. It's just that the covers are around their waists now.

Coll MacCulloch

There are strange psychosexual theories floating around out there. Most of them are ignored nowadays as backwards, oversimplistic, and even male-centric and bigoted by any self-respective psychologist or psychiatrist, but some few remain faithful, and plenty more laymen remain intrigued. Coll has heard of none of them; has heard nothing of the discourses and treatises written on why men seek this closeness with women; knows nothing of the parallels drawn between the act of intercourse and the pursuit of procreation and the return to the origins and the search for lost Eden.

He feels something of it, though. Right here, right now. He feels welcomed by her. He feels held by her, warmed by her, oddly protected by the way she holds him in her thighs, in her cunt, in her hands smoothing over his back. There is a little piece of paradise here for him and her, here outside the normal strictures of time and space. Here in this half-world where his moon always burns in the sky for him, where he can meet and adore her and pretend for a little while that he knows her.

Her face rests close to his. His eyes are closed still. His breathing is evening, his heartbeat resetting to baseline. She is still panting, those lovely soft breaths, that lovely soft way her breasts move against his chest. His heart could burst from it.

He stirs at long last. He moves aside a little. Rolls to his shoulder and his side, his arm still over her torso. He keeps her close and he keeps close to her; doesn't want to leave her figuratively or literally. He opens his eyes. They both have green eyes, don't they? He thinks her eyes are green. This is how little he really knows about her.

And yet how much he knows, too: the way she fucks, the way she moans, the way she clutches at him when she comes. He knows all of that, all those secrets that he shares with that select and blessed brotherhood she has thus honored. Is that a chauvinistic, male-centric way of thinking? Perhaps Coll knows no other way; he is, after all, such a son of Stag.

He raises himself on an elbow before long. He leans over her and kisses her over her heart. He kisses her nipples, one and then the other, delicately. He rubs his face on her breasts and then he settles again, closer to her, wrapping his arm around her.

Iris Dahlstrom

There is something in his eyes that she does see, and does know, when he rolls away from her and her own eyes open to find his face. She looks at him, seeing it there. Her eyes are green, but hard to tell in the half-light, the silver light. They are green, though. He must remember that clearly from downstairs, looking into her eyes while they drank.

Oh, she recognizes him now. Sees that bit of adoration, the closeness, the way he stays near. She doesn't mind, doesn't instantly begin recoiling: oh no, he's gotten attached. She has seen modis of hard hearts and bitter rage look at her a bit like that. No, not really -- not the same look, not the same thing exactly. But she's been wrapped up in arms, kept close, wordlessly near, and she has seen reluctance to let go just as often as she's seen them let go anyway, get up, put back on whatever clothes they bothered to take off, leaving without a word.

Iris knows a bit, though she doesn't know him, and she doesn't worry about it. She strokes his hair while he leans over her, kissing her chest, her nipples, rubbing his face on her. She smiles at him with an odd but not unwarranted tenderness.

"You in love with me now?" she teases, softly, but not coldly. Not meanly. Her hand still moves through his hair.

Coll MacCulloch

The corners of his mouth lilt up. Those wolves she knew before -- the hard-hearted modis, and even the younger ones, the ones of lesser moons but the same stony blood -- such a frank and tender confrontation would likely have made them reticent and embarrassed, would likely have turned their eyes away and sent them packing all the sooner.

He is not one of her wolves of the north. He comes from greener lands, warmer legends. He smiles a little, and she strokes his hair, and he nuzzles a little closer to her.

"You goin' tae pack your things an' go if I say yes?" he volleys back -- just as softly. There's a hint of tease to this, too.

Iris Dahlstrom

"That would take some time," she tells him, eyebrows arched. "Bra, panties, necklace -- I'm not sure where everything is right now. Wouldn't be much of a hasty exit."

Coll MacCulloch

He laughs quietly. That arm around her gives her a squeeze, a little hug. He kisses her shoulder now, the curve of it closest to him.

"Well then. Maybe I am in love wit' ye. Ye cannae blame me for'it."

Iris Dahlstrom

Iris's hand keeps moving in his hair, stroking it back, and though it's no buzzcut, it isn't too long. She strokes it anyway, not because it's in his eyes but because it's there, and because this touch can be so bonding, so caring, so warm. And she is bonded, and caring, and warm.

Her mouth quirks. "That was fast. Am I going to make it home tonight without a proposal?"

Coll MacCulloch

"Tonigh'?" he echoes, a quick-passing grin answering her quirk. "I was rather hopin' ye'd stay th' night. Maybe you can leave 'ere with a proposal in th' morn."

Iris Dahlstrom

Iris laughs softly: in his arms, in bed, lying entangled naked with him in sheets that smell of their joined sweat. She shakes her head, eyes twinkling. "Oh, I can't possibly get to sleep without a proposal. It's like a bedtime story."

Coll MacCulloch

He laughs with her. He laughs, and then he smiles, and then he pushes up and climbs over her and slides off the edge of the bed and bends the knee there, taking her hand in his.

"Iris Dahlstrom," he says, ever so serious, ever so solemn, "will ye do me th' honor o' marryin' me, for better an' worse, rags an' riches, sickness an' in health, tae love an' cherish until death or the front door o' this funny litt'le inn do us part?"

Iris Dahlstrom

She should have known better than to goad a hotblooded young Fiann, particularly one of his moon, particularly a young one with such a flashing grin, into proposing marriage.

Because he pushes up on his hands and slides out of her and she starts protesting, a noise here and then aimlessly grabbing at his arms, silly man leaving the nice warm bed and not nuzzling her nice soft tits anymore. She laughs, propping up on her elbows as he gets off the bed, bare-ass naked, getting on one knee to hold her hand in his. Maybe it's the one he fingered her with.

She's laughing through it all, until the very end: until death or the front door. Her brows tug together. Just for a moment. Then she laughs softly again, squeezing his hand. "Coll MacColluch," she says back to him, naked from the waist up because the sheets only go up so high, her hair tousled and her flesh pink and her eyes as luminous and fiery as cut gems, "nothing would make me happier."

Coll MacCulloch

That stitch in her brow. She's not the only one that feels it: the sorrow beneath the laughter, the knife's twist beneath the tickle. Her eyebrows tug together. His hand grips hers a little more firmly. Then she laughs. Then he really feels it, that twist, that pang:

nothing would make me happier.

He rises up on his knees and he kisses her again, because of course he does. He kisses her with furrowed brow, with sudden force. He hand sweeps up her side, spanning her long waist, cupping her breast. Holding her breast in his palm, feeling her heart beating against his wrist, as that first kiss comes to an end and he presses a second sealing one to her lips.

"Well, tha' settles it then," he says; manages, again, a slow-quirking smile. "You an' I will make honest people o' each other. Here," he starts to climb up, "let me back intae bed."

Iris Dahlstrom

The way he responds, she wonders if that answer has just made him want her all over again. He seems the type, for his body to forget that he just had sex twice in a row and get hard again, ready again, eager all over again. He kisses her, pulling her face to his, hands roaming, cupping her breast, feeling her, weighing her in his palm. Iris gives a little shudder.

Coll starts to climb up. Iris laughs and yanks the sheets up to cover her chest. "Oh, I'm afraid I can't," she says, trying and failing to feign seriousness. "Don't you think our wedding night would be so much more special if we stopped sleeping together until then?"

Coll MacCulloch

He should laugh it off. They should keep it light. He should guard his heart against breaking; keep it wrapped in laughter. He should, but right this moment he cannot quite bear to. He musters a faint, aching smile. It's the best he can do.

"I think this is our weddin' night," he says. "I think maybe this is as good as we're goin' tae get." His hands are pressed to the mattress on either side of her, wrinkling the sheets and denting the covers. He bends; kisses her just over the line of the sheets she -- to use archaic terminology -- clutches to her bosom. And then he does smile after all, full and bright and warm, lifting his face to hers.

" 'tis all righ'. I donnae mind so very much. It's a lot o' good we are gettin', f'r what it may be worth."

Iris Dahlstrom

This is their wedding night.

He's coming over her, naked and turned strange, shifting colors by the moonlight and the shadows. She lays back again, though she's still covered. He bends to her, kisses her like an animal lowering its head to drink from a stream. She breathes in deeply, lifting her chest against his mouth, and exhales.

It's all right, and he doesn't mind,

and it's good, for what it's worth.

Iris thinks he's lying. At least about the first half. She lifts her hands from where they clutch at the sheets and touches his face, drawing his mouth to hers. "All right," she whispers, kissing him once, murmuring against his lips. "Then marry me, and tonight can be our wedding night."

Coll MacCulloch

Maybe he is lying. The Fianna lie for a good story, remember? Maybe he's lying to himself, too, that he doesn't mind, that one night is better than none, that at least there was this much. Maybe he lies and maybe he does mind and maybe he doesn't ever want to leave this stupid tavern, maybe he thinks he could just live here with her forever, caught outside time and outside the world and outside the war. Maybe maybe maybe.

None of it matters when she touches his face. When she draws him back to her mouth, and when he goes: animal to water, pilgrim to mecca. He accepts that kiss and he returns it and she says what he does and he smiles against her mouth. He climbs back up onto the bed after all, slipping under those covers, scooting her over to the still-warm hollow he'd occupied a moment ago.

He could climb over her and fuck her again. That's what people do on their wedding nights, isn't it? Perhaps she even expects it; certainly, he would welcome another round. Not quite yet, though. He gets in bed, he's on his stomach, he reaches over to the nightstand and opens the little drawer and feels around and finds a little pad of paper, a pen. He leaves the paper where it is, but the pen: he takes that.

Rolls onto his back beside her. Holds his hand out for hers. If she takes it, he draws on her skin: two lines around the base of the fourth finger and, comically large, a diamond set right in the middle. Smiling, then, he brings her hand to his mouth; kisses her over that inked-in ring. "I do," he says.

Iris Dahlstrom

It surprises her. Not just how much it aches but that it hurts at all. They kiss and he means it; she means it, too, when their mouths touch and they taste each other again again again. She breathes in, scooting over, welcoming him beside her again, rolling toward him but he's not getting on top of her for another go. He's reaching past her. He gets the pen. Scribbles on the pad to make the ink start flowing from the ballpoint, and she is bewildered and at a loss until

she's not anymore, and he's finished drawing a ring on her left hand.

Iris doesn't laugh this time. She looks at the ring and smirks, then lets him take her hand and kiss it. "No, I've seen movies. First there are vows," she instructs him, chastising.

Coll MacCulloch

"Och, I spoke my vows when I proposed," Coll argues. "Efficiency, Mrs. MacCulloch. Almos' as important as diction, ye knoow. I was sayin' I do tae all o' them jus' now. Unless ye've other vows in mind?"

And he hands her the pen. Also, his hand.

Iris Dahlstrom

Iris just smiles. She can't help it; it's a little sad.

"Say them again," she says quietly, tucking a lock of his hair behind his ear.

Coll MacCulloch

And Coll gives in. He can't help that either. He turns toward her, facing her now on the bed. Takes that hand of hers with its ridiculous little ink-ring. Kisses her fingers, and then recites,

because she's not the only one who's seen movies:

"I do take ye, Iris Dahlstrom, as my lawfully wedded wife from this day forth. Tae 'ave an' to hold, for better an' for worse, for richer an' for poorer, in sickness an' in health, 'til death do us part."

Iris Dahlstrom

This time he leaves out the front door. Which may be intentional. Which may be an accident, a slip. Iris doesn't ask him to clarify. She smiles, then picks up the pen, scooting up to sit up, taking his left hand. And as she draws, leaving off the diamond he gave her but giving him a nice thick ring around his third finger, she says,

"I take you, Coll MacCulloch, to be my lawfully wedded husband from this day forth. To have and to hold, for better and for worse, for richer and poorer, in sickness and health, 'til death do us part."

The pen clicks. She flicks it off the bed and looks up at him, holding his newly inked hand, and smiles. But before he can lean in, even though no one's telling him he can now kiss the bride, she tells him: "I'm keeping my name. I hope that's not a dealbreaker. Oh, also, I can't have babies, so if you were hoping for a big family that could be a problem. And my sister is a real bitch."

Coll MacCulloch

"Well, I am keepin' my name too," Coll replies. "We can always adopt. An' I have an obscene number o' brothers an' sisters an' cousins an' aunts an' uncles an' they are all nutters, drunks an' bastards. So.

"Wit' ye permission, Mrs. -- what are ye, then, are ye Mrs. Dahlstrom? -- I'd like tae kiss m' bride."

Iris Dahlstrom

They'll each keep their names. They can adopt babies if they want to. And his family is full of crazy people too. So.

So, she thinks back at him, smiling. Is she Mrs. Dahlstrom? Iris laughs, and takes his face between her palms, and pulls him down to kiss her. She's falling back into the pillows as she does so, all but mauling his mouth.

Coll MacCulloch

He can hardly be faulted for falling into that kiss the way she falls into the pillows, can he? After all, he's the beaming groom, she's the glowing bride, this is their wedding night. Which is, in fact, how he thinks of this night. Their wedding night. They're married now. He met her a couple hours ago and he fell in love with her thirty minutes ago, if that, and now: married. 'Til death do them part, and the front door can go stuff itself.

He laughs as she does, laughs as she kisses him, muffles that laugh against her mouth as she pulls him with her,

tumbles down atop her with his newly beringed hand cupping her cheek, cupping the back of her head. He grins into that kiss, which is a happy, hungry, inexact sort of kiss. And let's be honest: pretty soon his hands are straying, pretty soon he's touching her breasts and cradling them in his palms and lifting them and rubbing them. Pretty soon he's rolling onto his back -- flopping, we might even say, the mattress jostling with his motion -- and rolling her atop, and grinning that lazy grin up at her.

"I think 'tis your turn tae be atop," he says, and leans up, and, yes,

kisses her again.

Iris Dahlstrom

Mrs. Dahlstrom, whose inhospitable womb and wonky eggs and bitchy sister and past exploits and different blood and so forth do not appear to deter her new husband, who seems to be taking their new marriage very seriously.

And why not? They have rings now. He's given her vows she knows better than to believe and given him vows she knows better than to say. She thinks that perhaps, when you do something against your better judgement, when you do something even though you know better, maybe then you mean it. Maybe then you must want it, somehow, in a way that defies logic. This does defy logic. Or at least it defies good sense.

It breaks her heart a little that he drew a diamond on her ring. Such a stupid little thing, to find it so endearing.

There's a sheet between their bodies now. Iris is kissing him, eyes closed, smiling, and eating at him, running her hands through his hair while he's running his hands down her body, pawing the sheets away, caressing her breasts, making her inhale and steal what's in his lungs, in his quickening breath. They are, just by moving, tugging the covers away from between them, getting Coll closer, getting their skins together.

He flops before they get him under the covers with her. He tells her it's her turn. Iris laughs, pushing up on her arms, then her knees, working the covers down and untangling them and pushing them until Coll is bared and she's bared and everything else is kicked to the foot of the bed. She's straddling him through half of this, at least, and he's maybe touching her, a cupped hand there, a stroke there, while she's arranging the bed and chastising him:

"...married thirty seconds and he thinks he can tell me what to do..."

She reaches behind him and fluffs his pillow. All this, fixing up their marital bed to be messier and cozier, which is all essentially to ignore his suggestion and go on nakedly straddling his body. And sometimes she leans forward and there are tits in his face or a soft stomach stroking his cock, and sometimes she's twisting, leaning back, and when he looks he can see that sweet pink warm loveliness between her legs and she's muttering about what a mess he's made of the bed and she

"...married a total slob..."

and she is enjoying herself, yes, she's tsking and trying not to laugh and teasing him, teasing him, of course.

Coll MacCulloch

They're both enjoying themselves. He grins up at her, lifting his head obligingly as she fluffs his pillow, raising one arm and then the other, raising his shoulders off the bed as she -- let's just say it -- fusses about the covers and the mess and what a slob he is.

"Married t'irty seconds," he counters, "an' she's done havin' sex wit' me an' dooin' chores aroun' the house instead. M' poor dick. Ridden raw an' then ignored f'revermore."

She's near him. She's leaning over him and doing something with the sheets, stretching them flat. He catches her around her waist, around the back. Hugs her to him, pressing those nice soft tits against his chest.

"Hey," he says softly -- jokingly, except it's not a joke, just the same way their drawn-on rings are jokes but not, just the same way their marriage is a joke but not. "Maybe we oughtae jus' stay 'ere. You can be a waitress downstairs, jus' like ye said ye wanted. I'll be a barkeep. O' maybe th' gardener an' groundskeeper, I doon't know. We can jus'... we can live 'ere together. Man an' wife."

Iris Dahlstrom

Iris laughs. Now that they're married, he's apparently morphed into a grumpy, bossy slob and she's become a fussy, frigid nag. She plumps his pillow one more time and is leaning over him even as he's pulling her down, close, and she gives a faint shiver, then melts over him, flesh to flesh, warmth to warmth. Kisses him, on his jaw and his neck, her hand going into his hair while he tells her what they might ought to do.

Stay here. She can waitress like she said; he'll tend bar or the grounds. Just live here and never leave.

Slowly, hearing him, she softens her kisses. Seals on tenderly on his cheek, lifting herself up on her elbows to look at him. Her hair is a bit thin but there is a lot of it; it hangs down around her cheeks, his face, brushes his skin. Her brow is wrinkled a bit.

"Is there something out there you don't want to go back to?" she asks, very quietly.

Coll MacCulloch

He likes her hair. He likes that it is what one might unkindly call flat and kindly call sleek; he likes that there is a lot of it and it gets everywhere. He can imagine silly, grumpy-old-married-couple arguments with her years down the line, vacuuming and finding her hair snarled in the brushes, I doon't understan' why ye cannae brush ye hair over th' wastebasket, woman, do ye knoow how many vacuum cleaners we ha' been through? and Coll MacCulloch, do you have ANY idea how RIDICULOUS that sounds? He likes her mouth too, wide and wry and maybe a little thin-lipped. He likes that absurd fake-gentle way she has of talking when she's really making fun of you, except she's not really making fun of you, she's actually flirting.

He sighs a little as she asks him if there's something out there he doesn't want to go back to. It is not an exasperated sigh, or a bored one, or ... anything like that. It's a wistful one.

"No," he says. " 'Tis no' tha'. It's jus'... well, there isnae truly anythin' out there tha' I do wan' tae go back ta. Or... nothin', at least, tha' I woul' be inconsolably crushed tae leave behind."

Iris Dahlstrom

She can imagine bickering with him. She wasn't, before, but now she does, she is, she's thinking of it as she fluffs the pillow and straightens the sheets and, well... bickers with him. She's not bickering, or thinking of bickering for very long, after she leans over him, touching him with gentleness, asking him that gentle question which is not making fun of him or flirting with him.

She's just being gentle with him, and it's not fake, and it's not absurd. Even if all of this, from their inked-on rings to their insane sex to their bickering to everything else, is pretty absurd. She strokes his jaw with her fingertips, looking into his green eyes with her own.

If she could have children, and they were his, surely they would be green-eyed, with red-gold hair, and they would be Fenrir-blooded Fianna, fierce warriors and poets and lovers and dancers and brawlers and drunks, but not bastards, because Iris and Coll are married.

Maybe they'll adopt little ones who won't have green eyes, or red gold hair, but will still grow up to be fierce warriors and poets and lovers and dancers and brawlers and drunks but still not bastards.

Iris smiles a little at what he says, touching him like that, on and on. "I know the feeling," she says, and she means it. Leans over him, kissing his mouth, folding herself to his body, and into his arms. It's odd, how gentle-slow she takes him then. Rubbing herself on him, and then maybe he or she reaches down, and they fit together, and she does it slowly, their mouths together, breathing and kissing and soft, soft,

warm, warm.

Coll MacCulloch

She knows the feeling.

He thought he might. Well, no. He didn't expressly think that, but when she says it, he's not surprised. Of course she knows the feeling: this woman who drove in from nowhere, to nowhere, this woman who was skimming a PennySaver to look for a waitressing job, maybe, and maybe open her own diner somewhere down the line. It's almost a fairy tale. The sort of half-baked hopes and aspirations of a woman who perhaps didn't so much plan a future as decide that she was tired of her own past. Done with it. Moving on.

Nothing left there that would crush her to leave behind.

He smiles as she comes down to him. Returns to him, his wedded wife, and maybe it wasn't exactly lawful but really who was going to check? He wraps his arms around her, long and lean and hard, and she rubs herself on him, and he gasps softly into her mouth, and then someone reaches down and someone shifts and someone stirs and then,

oh, they fit together, she does it slowly, his eyes are closing, they are kissing in these warm soft wet little kisses and he moans ever so quietly. He puts his hands on her ass. He rubs his palms over her skin, up and down and up again, tracing the curvature from waist to flank and back again, as they move together.

Iris Dahlstrom

He has it right. She's not running from anything either. There's nothing out there she'd just die to go back to. She's just tired of her own past. Ready to move on. And maybe that means this, or a waitressing job, or... both. Who knows. They don't talk about it anymore. She kisses him, and takes him, and slides warm and tight down onto him, which is where she stays.

It's slow this time, with his hands rubbing over her body, cupping her breasts or her ass, stroking her back while she moves. She winds her hips on top of him, moves him inside of her while she nibbles his ear. They've had each other once, twice already, and they are in no hurry now. Beyond that: it's their first time as husband and wife. They may as well fuck like it.

The room is still so dark. Luna has not moved from where she is framed, as though they are stuck in time. They only see each other by moonlight, but Iris keeps closing her eyes when they kiss, and touching his body, and once, when she's moving a little faster, rougher, when he can feel her tightening up, getting close,

she whispers his name. It arcs through the air like electricity, like lightning, from her lips to his even when they aren't touching. It's a breathed sound, a gasp all its own, a plea.

Coll!

And if he is not in love with her right then, deeply and wholly and forever, then he's never known love at all.

--

She comes warm, soft, and wet as one of those kisses. She is holding him, covering him, moaning into his mouth, pushing her fingers into his hair, tightening her thighs around him. It's good. It was good the first time, and it was good the second, and it's good now, and for a thrilling moment she just enjoys having a younger, lean, muscular lover underneath her. She just enjoys him. It catches her, good and sweet and taut, before it starts letting her go,

good and sweet and loose, undulating, rocking on top of him.

--

Some time later, she is panting on his chest, worn out from her orgasm, from his. Iris's hair is spread over his arm and his shoulder, her breath hitting his nipple. She is sweaty again, will cool soon. He'll have to cover her up, keep her warm.

When she can breathe, and when she can think, she gasps out: "Do you wanna --" then she remembers, and does not finish the question.

Coll MacCulloch

Coll hardly does any work at all this time. He doesn't jackhammer up into her. He doesn't flip like a fish and pound her against the mattress. He certainly doesn't carry her all around the room and fuck her standing up or against the mirror or any of the scandalous, shocking things they've done.

He

just

enjoys it. Loses himself in it. Lies there, laid out, holding on to her and touching her everywhere, everywhere. Her ass and her sides and her back and her breasts and her hair and her cheeks and, near the end, when she's kissing him, where she's going a little faster, when she's riding to her orgasm and then riding it out on him in those short, tight, ecstatic little grinds,

wrapping his arms around her. Hugging her tight tight tight to his chest, holding her, closing his eyes to the sound of his name and lifting his head and closing that tiny gap, kissing her, kissing those gasps out of her mouth as he lets go, dissolves, tumbles headlong into his own blind-hot climax.

--

Some time later she is worn out, and so is he. She is breathing across his chest, sweaty, cooling. He is covering her already, though not with blankets or sheets: with his hands, spreading them over her back. Half a question she gives him; then breaks off.

He opens his eyes. Trailing strands of her hair touch his hand, slip between his fingers. He rubs her back slowly, adoringly.

"Do I want tae what, love?"

Iris Dahlstrom

Of course they haven't said they love each other, not without a bit of teasing. They're married but they don't say I love you, ew, gross. He calls her 'love' and she is hopelessly, suddenly endeared and simultaneously rolling her eyes at herself. How could she be so ridiculous?

But they're lazy and cooling themselves in the air. She slowly moves up a bit, not far, just enough to part their skin, just enough to look at him. Smiles, a pull of the corner of her mouth outward.

"I was going to ask if you wanted to stay the night here with me," she murmurs to him, because this used to mean something. If he was asked to stay the night, to sleep with her, to wait til morning, then there was usually no exchange and he usually wasn't one of her boys. It used to mean something, but doesn't now,

because he's her husband.

Iris leans to him again, kissing his cheek, softly, then nestling down against his shoulder while he touches her hair. "But of course we're staying," which is what she remembered. "It's our wedding night."

Coll MacCulloch

Coll's eyes are closed. Coll is so lazy and satisfied and replete right now. Coll murmurs some quiet appreciative noise as she slides up, looks at him. He cracks his eye open a little. Just one. Just a slit. He is still smiling.

"O' course we are stayin'," he echoes, and

the truth is he wants to say the rest. He wants to say we are staying here forever because you will be a waitress and then maybe one day the owner, and I will be a groundskeeper or a bartender, and we will grow old here and never worry about your bitchy sister or my crazy cousins or whether or not we ever adopt kids or whether or not Gaia wins the War. We are staying here, tonight and forever, because otherwise

I might never see you again.

But that makes him terribly sad to think about, and with so little time, it seems a waste to spend any of it being sad. He doesn't say it. He says what he does: of course they are staying, it's their wedding night. He says it and then he wraps his arms around her a little tighter, urges her gently and wordlessly and insistently to lie down, lie down, lay her head down on him again. Be close.

"We're married," he whispers, like a lovely little secret; like a reminder neither of them really need. He has a ring around his finger. She has one around hers. Hers has a diamond because of course he would want her to have a diamond, just like he wanted her to have the finest scotch he could afford, even if what he could afford turned out to be paint thinner. Of course his ring doesn't have a diamond because he is a male, he is a warrior, he is her male and her warrior and so, daughter of Fenris that she is, she decided his ring should be unadorned and simple and strong and bold as he is.

Iris Dahlstrom

Of course they're staying. Iris smiles at this, and it's almost a smirk, because so many of her smiles are at least halfway there. Fond, aching, wry little smirks. She kisses him again, softly, coming down around him again, wrapping her slender arms around his shoulders. By comparison to him, at least, she's effervescently soft. And there's no one else here to compare her to, so it can be left there: she is fair and warm and soft. It can be how he feels for her, even if she has callouses on her fingers, even if her hair is sometimes lank, even if she has a scar or two, even if she was never pampered any more than she might pamper herself.

Iris holds him, nuzzling under his chin, while he thinks deeply sad, almost melodramatically sad, thoughts. He is a Fiann, after all. What she doesn't question is the way he holds her, urging her closer, closer, wrapping her up in sheets and body heat, because if he doesn't do this, if he lets go, if they leave here ever, ever, then she may be gone forever. They met such a short time ago, and while it's true that you can't just marry someone you just met, they can, and they did. They may as well go all the way, and feel sad at the thought of losing one another.

Her hand strokes his side as she rolls a bit to her side, so she's not lying right on top of him anymore. They're sort of messy. She doesn't get up again, though, at least not right this second. She lays her head on his shoulder, his chest, his arm wrapped around her, and she closes her eyes slowly. Opens them slower. Every time she blinks it is a revelation.

"Do you want to sleep?" she asks him, which is just another way of saying: are you going to keep me awake?

Coll MacCulloch

Too lazy to open his mouth to let it escape now, a laugh rumbles through him. Truth be told Coll was already halfway asleep by the time she moved; halfway asleep again by the time she asked if he wants to sleep.

"Aye," he murmurs, and shifts a little: repositions, resettles, turns his head to kiss her with warm-rough affection; not on the mouth this time but on the temple or the brow or the hair, wherever is easiest to reach. "Let's sleep. Doon't leave wit'out me in th' mornin', okay?"

Iris Dahlstrom

Perhaps that's her job now. To fluff the pillow and fuss over the sheets while neglecting his poor dick, to snap at him when he tells her what to do, to keep him awake when he wants to sleep and when she wants to sleep. But that's not why she asks. She asks because of the way he has fucked, over and over, the way he keeps getting hard in an eyeblink, and she's truthfully not sure he's going to let her get any rest tonight.

But he's half asleep in the dark beside her, and then she's smiling, closing her eyes as he kisses her. He's so young, she thinks. Young and dumb and reckless, she is guessing, but if you're going to marry a man you just met with ballpoint-pen wedding rings, may as well go with the man who suits the occasion.

They sleep.

--

The moon does set. The sun does rise. Wherever they are, these things, at least, remain. And the sun rising sears through the open window, making Iris -- always a night owl -- scoot down and hide her face against Coll's ribs, her face half-covered by the blankets. She thinks to herself you stink and she thinks to herself that she feels so gross, and then she just goes back to sleep for awhile.

She is not the first to wake.