llorando en la inocencia de un ritmo juguetón

[attitude]

She doesn't say anything on the way back to her apartment. No sound offered save for the click of her heels and the rumble of her bike's engine, which dies as she neatly parks to one side of her reserved spot in the garage. Years of traveling across millions of miles, and never once has she invited a man back to her home, to an apartment she could arguably call hers and hers alone. There isn't any fear that stems from extending this invitation, no greater meaning that she's trying to surface.

It simply contrasts in its normalcy.

The lock clicks with a jangle of her keys, and Faye turns around, one hand groping for the handle as the other traces a line down the center of his jacket. Once he steps inside, he'll be able to see everything from her life on display, from case files for bounty heads strewn over the coffee table to evening dresses carefully draped over chairs in case of a sudden need.

Struck with a thought, Faye offers a small, amused grin.

"I'm Faye, by the way."

Comments

[concluded]

He breathes.

He steps in, filtering in the apartment around him, taking in out of the corner of his eye some laundry needing washed, takeout boxes in the trash, signs of a life either too busy for mundane chores or too filled with more interesting things. He sees the case files, knows immediately that she's an investigator of some kind. It isn't a far stretch to believe. She's perceptive, enough that she'd managed to crack House like a mirror.

Now she's got to deal with her bad luck.

Slipping his jacket off, he tosses it over the nearest piece of furniture, joined by his cane. He can get around the few rooms of an apartment, even a strange one, without. "House," he says, voice distracted, before he cups her face in both hands and kisses her again, like a long, deep drink of water. Something he's been wanting for a long time, something he hasn't had. It's clumsy passion, but not for lack of experience; only for lack of the finesse of detachment.

[attitude]

She's not looking to be someone's savior. If nothing else, Faye doesn't think herself capable of it, her own existence too transient, as much so as time has been for her. It would be simply another scene in the act had he not already slipped past the curtains, discovered for himself how tightly her fists are still wrapped around the need to survive, more than Faye cares to admit.

When he kisses her, it's like he saps that need, replacing it with one of his own. She breathes in the middle of the kiss, keeping it prolonged, fingers gripping the front of his shirt. It's a good kiss, much like the first, with her hand slowly rising up to curl by his cheek while the other reaches around his back, bringing him to her as much as she goes to him. He's warm.

Faye can't tell who breaks for air first, but it doesn't matter, her lips grazing against the side of his neck as she pivots them both and steps towards the bedroom, fingers deftly undoing the long line of buttons down his shirt.

"Not your surname," she says, fingertips brushing against the line of his collarbone. "Your given name."

[concluded]

He hesitates, pulling away to study her face. His hands move to brush fingers along her ribs. Smooth; not a surgeon's hands, but the even, thin callouses of a musicin. They work down, over the planes of her belly. It's cool, from exposure to the air outside.

"Greg," he rasps, licking at his dry lips. "My name's Greg. But I don't use it."

Gripping her waist, he lifts her up and onto the corner of her bed. His leg may be damaged, but his upper body is all the stronger for the weakness below, and he's no small man.

[attitude]

His body doesn't run as hot as most men Faye knows, forcing her to chase after the warmth, arching her back when coaxed by the steady brush of his hands. But what they lack in heat, they make up with precision, carefully brushing over the contour of her sides before finding that soft curve above harder planes of muscle, lifting her onto the bed. She looks up at him; wonders how he might look under her, or if that perhaps is something he can't abide given the state of his leg. It might come off as pity.

But she doesn't pity him. Someone has to acknowledge the opposite of his glass half empty.

"I'm the one who would be using it, not you," she points out, tugging on his belt with strong fingers and loosening it with a soft metal clink, green eyes focused on his blue, the color lost in the dark. Pulling the leather out and dropping it unceremoniously on the floor, Faye continues to stare upward as she curiously undoes the button of his pants, nudging them down to his hips, slowly. Testing the water with soft fingertips over slightly weathered skin.

[concluded]

"Do what you want, then," House says; not as though he doesn't care, but as though he can't stop her. He can't, except by turning and leaving her apartment, and he is less ashamed of being Greg House than he is of being sent home alone, cold, horny and angry.

His hands slip away from her, moving hers out of the way to slip pants and briefs down over his hips and to his thighs, before stopping. He lifts her hands by the wrists, rests them against her chest, the fasten of her shirt between her breasts. Leaning forward for another kiss, as hungry as the first, he traps both their hands between their bodies. Even the darkness isn't enough to make him forget the scars. He isn't ready for her to see them.

"Condom," he says pointedly, "Lube. Unless you're interested in doing this some other way. I'm all ears. Actually, I'm pretty sure I'm all hands right now. But you know what I mean."

The joke is defensive, but not sarcastic, and not entirely uncaring.

[attitude]

He's hard to read. And though there is a good reason for it, with Faye spending her time around hunters and bounty heads as opposed to the general populace, still she feels like there's something different about him. Or maybe he wants to be seen as different, wants to make something meaningful out of that slip of hand and skid of tire against the asphalt. And to make something out of that leg, in a way that Jet never did with his arm.

He's a puzzle that Faye's not sure is worth solving, even as she returns the fire of his kiss.

With her hands pinned to her chest and practical concerns dropped abruptly from his lips, Faye stares when he pulls away, sparing no laughs for his thin attempt at a joke. After a second's pause, she nudges his hold away, returning her hands to his hips but going no lower. It's not like she doesn't have the materials in her dresser drawer, but if he plans on brief and mechanical, there are easier ways. With longer fingers trailing up from the base of his spine, Faye leans forward, a gentle palm wrapped around the base of his arousal before she carefully pushes her lips over the tip.

Somehow managing not to smear her lipstick in the process.

[concluded]

"Wait," he murmurs, voice half-strangled, as the heat of her lips touches against the anxious throb between his legs. He doesn't remember the last time a woman's done this -- to him, because she wanted to. As good as it feels, House can't forget the tremors running up his side, warnings of weakness in his leg, threatening to buckle from please.

"Wait," he says again, voice angrier this time. Annoyed with himself. He rolls away from her, onto her bed, where he sits heavily on the edge of it, one hand cradling his head and rubbing away a threatening headache, as the other gropes for her chest. Finds it. Strokes up under her shirt to find a firm, young breast.

"I can't stand. I can't ... " He doesn't want her kneeling there on her knees either, and uses the spread of his palm to work up over her shoulder and pull her forward, over his chest. On top of him.

[attitude]

She pulls off with almost a kiss, suddenly shivering as he rolls away, the air no longer warm between the both of them. It's easy to wonder what she would be seeing if only she'd turned on the light, but somehow the rest of the senses make up for it — the stagger of his breath and the fevered heat of his skin, finally warm. He gropes at her chest, and she lets out a breath, licking at her lower lip at the control of it.

Of his hands, tugging her forward and turning the both of them, until she sits on top and sees exhaustion in his expression.

Leaning forward, Faye lets her palms rub against the length of his chest, smoothing over shoulders and fingers stroking down the veins of his arms until she reaches his wrists. They're not quite even in width. Carefully lowering her weight until she sits on his thighs, Faye pulls his hands up, palm to her chest and fingers pushed up to the fastening of her shirt. "You can," she counters, catching onto the unfinished end of his sentence. Letting go of his hands, Faye sets herself to removing his shirt, nudging the fabric down over either of his shoulders.

[concluded]

Her hands are soft and well-manicured, young and graceful with sharp long nails, dark with lacquer and bare;y scraping against his skin, crisp when they brush through the wiry hair on his chest and follow his arms down their length. He isn't unconfident, and hardly unskilled, but he hasn't been with a woman quite this young in months or more, and everything about her puts everything about him in relief.

She lets go of his hands, and his fingers work quickly at her buttons, not with renewed confidence, but with desperate energy. He wants to hold onto it as long as he's able.

He sits up, gripping her hips and tracing the outline of the bone under them with his thumbs. "Do you know how lucky you are?" he asks, mouthing at the delicate skin and structure of her collarbone, feeling the strength of her pulse there against his tongue.

[attitude]

It's not a rare thing for Faye to take to bed these days — if anything, far more frequent than it used to be with so many days spent stranded in space. There are nights with Spike, where she constantly feels like the one chasing after, needing him more than she ever dares admit, needing something familiar and a reminder that the past few years didn't amount to nothing. A constant, searing desperation and a rending of her inner steel, knowing that every second is some strangely bought time that she never wanted access to. There are nights with Caesar, making pleasure into its own culture and purpose, a battle for dominance without any sharply-edged threat.

Still, this time is different, and the deft hands undoing the buttons of her shirt feel like they may as well be peeling away all the shields she's carefully built. She's not sure how he sees her. Not sure how she wants to be seen. And his fervor only throws Faye into a sharper confusion, a soft gasp falling from her lips as he sits up and the heat of his body draws closer. Her nipples brush against his chest in the movement, hardening into peaks, and she traces one hand down the strong line of his backbone while the other still rests between his thighs, moving slow and constant.

"You have no idea," she breathes, and once the hand on his back hits the small dimples to either side of his spine, Faye traces it back around, never breaking contact with his skin before she reaches his hand and redirects it, tugging it towards that ache and cupping him there. "I don't know how you think you know me already. As though you can read me like a book. Sometimes those have surprise endings."

[concluded]

"You're lucky because you're young," House says, breathy as his head moves from her collar to her long neck, the throb there an answer to the throb and damp, curling heat there. He bites, tastes the salt of her skin between his teeth, without asking permission.

"You have a good excuse for treasuring your life. But if I wanted to read you, I would. People aren't as complicated as they like to portray themselves as in fiction. Nobody is. Everyone's simple."

He curls two fingers between her legs with a sigh, slipping in, still dry, to scratch blunt, short nails against the velvet softness there.

"Different shades of simple."

[attitude]

There's an erratic pattern to Faye's breath, sharp little intakes at the surprises and measured breathing in between. She could war with him for the touch, take control of the way that he wraps around her now, exploring, nudging — but why fight that battle? Pleasure is pleasure, and the curiosity falls more towards his words.

He has the effect of making her feel wrong, even when she knows she isn't.

"I'm young. I'm beautiful, and smarter than anyone tends to give me credit for, because my face discounts my intelligence," Faye says, raising her hips off of House's lap just enough to shove her shorts and panties down until they pool mid-thigh. "And none of that says anything about whether or not the world is worth living for. Or if you have the right people in it. An individual chess piece is nothing but simple, yet it only takes thirty-two to make a game that people are still studying today."

A soft moan falls from her lips when she brushes his fingers by her entrance, still aching for the touch, and keeping the column of her neck perilously close to the brush of his breath.

"You're lonely. Simple idea. Solving that, on the other hand."