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]

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."