Cherry Creek

River
Cherry Creek State Park was, in fact, a half an hour out outside of Denver. When you got to Aurora it was a pretty easy place to find, being one of the few places that offered year 'round camping and access to birds and wildlife and mostly modern amenities like actual bathrooms if you wanted to hike back and see the actual bathrooms. River had been avoiding food for the most part, and generally finds the bathrooms at campgrounds a little offputting anyway.

So, there was walking to be had. She wasn't dressed for hiking, and River was more the type to wander. She seemed, while not completely clothed in the raiment of an outdoorswoman, very much in her element being outside. It's cold; it's going to get colder and she knows it but the young woman actually did ante up for buying an actual coat at one point because she was committed to being in Colorado and she wasn't going to not be in the middle of a living, breathing facet of nature just because she wussed out a little because of a little cold.

Besides, if things get too bad she's got a blanket shoved in the trunk and some glow sticks. River knows nothing about cars, but knows that glow sticks are much more useful than they seem and you never know when you need a blanket. We digress.

There was hiking, or walking, or whatever to be had. The ground is a little uneven, but they do get to a place where the view of the water is nice and the trees have provided a decent amount of cover and they're far enough off the path that no one is going to likely bother them. River was down by the bank; she's rolled up her pants legs and thrown her shoes somewhere (because, again, she could not be bothered to wear shoes for any extended period of time, even if it was in the forties). She's standing on a rock in the middle of the creek, has her hands shoved in her pockets.

"Ohhhh, I can't wait until this freezes over," she says, the mirror of excitement creeping into her voice. She knows she should be excited, has memories of being excited and can parrot back said excitement. It just... slightly misses the mark.

Samir
The Doc Marten's Samir wears are great for stomping the pavement and keeping his ankles from rolling on the rare occasion he decides he has to run from someone. They hold up in nearly every weather condition one can imagine and they don't break down easy. Even if they did not belong to an initiate of Matter and an apprentice of Entropy they would not break down easy.

Samir however does not spend much time outside. He doesn't hike. He doesn't like jogging or swimming or kayaking or any of that nonsense. The only reason he is outside in this sunny yet chilly weather is that is what River wants to do and he sensed that River needed to indulge her more primeval side. Which is how they wind up down by the creek.

This creek runs southeast. He lives on its banks. It's strange to see it within the context of civilization. Normally when he sees it it's just beyond his ancient Airstream trailer. Nothing but farmland and forestry around it. If he turns and looks he can see the city behind them.

"It freezes?" he asks. Sam has yet to survive a winter out here. He was born in Vancouver. One would think he would be used to winter but then again he left when he was twelve. Thanks, Mom. "And you can't wait?"

Suffice to say he's still on the banks of Cherry Creek. Call it spotting. He's spotting her.

River
Right now, River Vasquez operates on an entire paradigm of should.

She knows that she enjoys water, knows that she enjoys being out in nature, knows that under most circumstances that she would be frolicking off into the water and coming back cold and a little regretful for a second but not quite ready to give in and say that she'd made a bad decision because she needed to be out in nature and feeling the autumn slip away into winter. She looks down and the water glitters, it's those little moments that water has when it's decided to render the gravel into gemstones.

There's a smile on her face and she wears the vestiges of delight but it isn't wild, it isn't laced with laughter at something that she can't begin to really describe to people.

"I saw a youtube video of a man skipping rocks on a frozen lake, I'm counting down the days until that-" she looks back and takes a careful hop to a nearby rock to start her trek back over to the banks "-is something I can try."

Samir
If River were a person who normally operated as one restrained this would not strike him as strange. But she seems a different person than the one he met the other night and their kind wear masks sure but this seems less like a mask and more like an alteration of her personality.

He considers the way she says what she says. The emptiness of what she says. Maybe this is how she always is and she was putting on a front the other night. He doubts it. Based on what he's read on Ginger he doubts it.

Blame it on something she said the other night. She knew Ihsan. He knew Ihsan was from Egypt originally. Cairo specifically. He and Ihsan were both in Cairo when the revolution erupted but they hadn't known each other then. The Code was all connected. This is a shot in the dark. It helps him focus. He addresses her in Arabic to help himself focus.

"Hal anta bikhayr?"

[mind 1: sense emotions. fuck modifiers.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (4, 4) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

River
River Vasquez learned Arabic because, one day, after she'd been skiddish and wide eyed and weepy and shocked over her awakening, she decided that she wanted to speak Arabic. Enrolled in a short class during the spring and became a voracious consumer of a language that was not her own. At the point that she had decided she was going to learn something completely out of her comfort zone, she was already fluent in four other languages.

So, she'd studied. Picked up the basics and shoved herself into situations where she would have to use every bit of her knowledge as frequently as possible until her speech was fluent and the ease at which she read wasn't unimpressive. It wasn't something she'd picked up from someone else or lingered from the memory of being a different person. Learning languages was something that was her own, and River was very, very good at it.

He asks her if she's okay.

"No," she tells him, and it comes off sounding frank and could have been a slap in the face were it not for the fact that she has done an incredibly good job of making sure emotions didn't come up at all. There was nothing there. No joy, no anger, no mild amusement. It's very hard to sense something that isn't here.

"I haven't been okay since I moved here. I'll be okay, I know that. Eventually, things will work themselves out but right now I'm not okay."

Samir
Ah, fuck.

Samir and River's former mentor have in common their earnestness. He does not have the same aw shucks sort of innocence about him that Michael does but Samir does not seem capable of lying. Even when he pulls a stupid face or speaks in sarcasm it is so obvious that it could not pass for true. He does not seem to have a manipulative bone in his body.

One of the perks of his mental illness is that he does not have to spend much time around other people and their problems. Other people's problems tend to bring disorder with them. More than dirt he cannot handle disorder. It took him an inordinate amount of time to incorporate entropy into his paradigm. He may never master it.

But River is clearly covering up her hurt with control. He can sense the Mind magick active in her. She presents as a woman who feels nothing and needs more than she can ask for. Her surface thoughts are desolate. There's nothing there. That isn't normal.

He doesn't want to do this. He's dead sober and dead straight. He hasn't even taken a deep breath of creek air to give himself a rush. He barely even knows her. He likes her. They are both pretty young things. But he's worried about her.

"You got a lighter?" he asks.

It's a cheap ploy to get her to come back to land but he tries it anyway.

River
She likes it, when she has the capacity to actually process what that means. She finds his sarcasm funny enjoys the fact that Samir doesn't seem malicious, doesn't seem like he seeks to gain anything from being deceitful. One of the first things one learns when working with Entropy is the way that the truth breaks down and you have two options to avoid being found out- lie about everything, or develop a tendency to be honest when it matters.

He asks if she has a lighter and she doesn't think anything of it. After all, they came out here to smoke and be in a park and that was what she came prepared to do... except for the fact that River doesn't have any weed on her. She's got half a pack of cigarettes from someone that she said she would hold onto; who really knew what River kept in her purse, but one couldn't be surprised when her answer was-

"Oh, yeah," and she slowly started to make her way back to the edge of the creek. The young woman went to her bag to fish something out, retrieving a little pink lighter whose origins she can't actually remember.

River holds the lighter out to Sam, waits patiently for him to take it. "Here."

Samir
The lighter feels subtle and liberating at once. It's a faint feeling but one that makes Samir frown. Resonance he neither can recognize nor wants to inquire about. It'll do.

So he produces a cigarette. Hand-rolled. Offers it to her straight from the yellow plastic case he keeps in his pocket and if she takes it great and if she doesn't he lights it for his own anyway.

Either way she's here on land with him. Sitting with him maybe. He chooses to sit on the ground even though the chill saps seat from his backside. Puts him lower to the ground. Less mass for the wind to have at. A few tendrils of black have come loose from the knot at the nape of his neck and he banishes them with a quick shake of his head.

"I know it's none of my business," he says. Looking straight ahead at the creek at first but then turns to look over at River. Genuine concern tensing his brow. It isn't a frown. His eyes are the color of whiskey. The daylight lets her see it. "But..." Shit. He has to translate this into pagan. "... you know someone's cast Calm on you, right?"

He knows she knows. The spell smacks of her resonance. He still asks as if the possibility exists that she had no idea.

River
There's a certain mindfulness that comes with smoking. Or, at the very least, it's something that she takes with her. It's being aware of the way smoke feels when it comes into your lungs, being able to accept and be aware of the way that it burns and the signals it sends your brain that you need to exhale. She holds it, though, knows that she needs to hold it and takes a few seconds before she exhales. River is a dancer; she went to school with art majors and has been to more than a few parties. She's smoked before. Not as often as, say, a theatre major would but she's no stranger to partaking.

River settled down to sit with him, left her legs stretched outward before she handed the cigarette back and put the ligher back into her pocket. She looks at him and catches that he's concerned. Her brows knit together for a moment because his concern is new information to process and there is no frame of reference for dealing with Samir when he is concerned. It goes back to basic protocols- someone is concerned, so assuage their fears accordingly. She doesn't shy away from meeting his glance.

She hadn't seen what color his eyes were before- they're striking. Hers are warm, but dark. A little like hot chocolate or (much to her chagrin) coffee with cream.

He inquires as to the state of her... selfness. She tries to give him a smile that is reassuring but he knows that there is no real emotional basis for it, just there because he's concerned and that's the appropriate reaction.

"Oh, that," with a little wave, "Ihsan and Mike and I had to go deal with an issue with a Nephandus and I was concerned that I might have an averse reaction to the environment? So, I took precautions to make sure that wouldn't be a problem."

She perks up, as if she realized something, "it's really not a bad thing."

Of course it's not. It's not a bad thing, it's not a good thing, it's nothing. That's the problem.

Samir
"I haven't learned how to do that yet. I'd like to. I just..."

Disarming the person you're trying to reach is one of the oldest tricks in the book but Sam is neither a therapist nor equipped to pretend to be one. His only qualification is that he gives a shit about the well-being of people he considers friends. He doesn't know if he considers River a friend yet. She knows Grace. Grace is a friend. Grace also doesn't need him. Doesn't feel the need to shunt herself off with Code just to function.

This the Nephandus who killed her friend. The one who has been possessing or leading to the possession of that Michael guy. Ihsan was there with them. Alright. Stands to reason Michael - Mike - has a relationship with Ihsan and River. Maybe with Farrah too. Averse reaction. Precautions.

He has no idea how Chakravanti work. Amanita was almost a Euthanatos but she ran away before she could go through her initiation rite. That was probably for the best anyway.

"I... sometimes think it's better to have the averse reaction than to just... not."

He locks his eyes on her face whether she's looking at him or not.

"Why do you keep it going, if it's over?"

River
Let it be said that talking to a person who has turned off their emotional responses is going to be very willing to give responses that aren't keyed in to the concept of shame. It's just a series of facts; River felt things at one point and at this juncture doesn't have to think about how she was feeling so she can, instead, focus on how she knows she would feel within a given situation.

Why does she keep this going, though? If it's all done and over with, then why doesn't she just drop the effect and go on living her life and she can pick things up wherever. River has to think about this. She looks at Samir for a second, takes in the curves and angles of his face. She takes in the way that his eyes lock on her face and she's studying him for a second, as if she's trying to figure out what answer he's looking for and concludes that this isn't a canned response.

No, this is actually a question that requires thinking. And she does think about it. Let it be said that she's never been afraid to take her time when she's concluded that she actually has time. She looks from his face to the stream, over the way that sunlight plays on the water.

"If I stop the effect then it all comes back, but it'll be worse then and I don't know if I'm ready for that," like she's thinking about it, shakes her head and concludes it's a bad idea, "right now, I can go to work and actually make it through my shift. I can look at things without having that weighted reaction and it's just a study of facts."

There is a second.

"I don't have the resources necessary to make processing the events leading up to dealing with the nephandus and afterwards any easier. When it all comes back, there won't be anybody there to help make this easier so, right now, it's easier to just not need that sort of support and assistance."

River
(closing tag to be safe)

Samir
"I mean..."

Call a spade a spade. Samir has no self-esteem because he hasn't ever had to. He made his way through his awakening because his mentor was there. He made it through his apprenticeship because he was smart but he never had to internalize his own intelligence. His cabalmates were always there to protect him but they never felt the need to build him up.

That is neither here nor there.

Maybe he thinks of himself as expendable. Disposable. A commodity. Whatever. Maybe he actually thinks he can help her. That this isn't the worst situation in which he's ever met another person. Maybe he has been here before.

River never met his pals Richardson or Amanita. Will never meet Perez. May have met Kayf since Michael knew Kayf. Doesn't matter. She can't dial in a reference as to his qualifications for making this easier. Life isn't easy. He can attest to that.

"I'm here."

River
Grace said she'd had concerns. She could understand Grace having concerns, but took them as something that were more based out of a desire to keep her city safe than anything that had to do with River. She may have been wrong, and River may very well have read the situation wrong entirely. The people she'd talked to at the beginning of her time there were nowhere to be seen when Farrah died. No call, no checking in- and she couldn't begrudge them that. People have lives. The world moves on when people die and she knowsthis.

Samir has seen her less than a hand full of times, and now he's sitting on the bank of some creek asking her if she's okay and says that he's here and she looks at him. Quirks her mouth to the side when she realizes that his logic is, in fact sound. Samir isn't nobody, and he is there. She thought no one was going to be there once she dropped her effect and had to scramble to pick everything back up because she has to keep going and she doesn't have time to grieve yet. Hadn't had time to grieve since she got here, but it's a different sort of grief now.

He says he's here, though, and she can't argue with him.

So, there is a moment where she looks away, scoots a little closer so her bare feet are closer to his, so that her hip is against his. River doesn't say anything to him, doesn't know that she probably shouldn't be in Sam's space, that this might be indeed too much for him to handle but she's there and he's warm and he's there.

The first real indication that he gets that something shifts is when she inhales sharply, when the effect gets cast asside and dissipates despite her best efforts to talk herself into keeping things going. River let out a slow, shaking exhalation of breath and there was that slip of control. That moment that she'd cast magick and will aside for feeling what was there.

"I'm not ready yet," she tells him, insists in Arabic with an unsteady breath and all the decorum she can muster. She doesn't want to be crying. She doesn't want to feel like this, and doesn't want to seem- what? Weak, confused, damaged, wounded, what? She doesn't want to feel human but she knows exactly what becomes of us when we lose that part of ourselves to grief and circumstance. She doesn't want him to know how incredibly afraid she is to feel all of this, but it's obvious.

Samir
[wp: lol he has a derangement]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )

Samir
And it shocks him to feel her body against him. Doesn't repel him. It's just a shock. Makes him take a deep breath and consider logistics. Consider the fact that if he puts his hand on the other side of her body that it's going to touch the grass. Normally he would have some ritual involved in placing his palm upon the earth. Would have to flick his lighter a certain number of times or tie and untie his laces. Would have to pluck up a certain numbers of blades of grass.

Today he doesn't. He can keep his shit together long enough to extend the arm not holding the cigarette and plant its hand on the other side of River's hip. Let her feel like she's not alone but not grab onto her. Not try to possess her.

She's not ready yet.

"You don't have to be."

No idea what he's doing. He sets down the cigarette without looking to see where it's going and puts that hand at the side of her face. Looks her deep in the eye to make sure he isn't about to hurt her before he draws in and kisses her on the mouth.

River
There's something to be said about being present, how it can be its own reward and this- no matter how horribly she hurts right now- is a reward in and of itself. In some ways, this is almost a becoming in its own right. The breaking, tearing, building- it's all reforming and pressing on to the next place it needs to inhabit. She would think in terms of art an analogies, but somehow creating beauty and form has an unpleasant taste in her mouth.

She says she's not ready, insists like it's the only thing she has to hold onto but his reply is simple- you don't have to be. River looks at Samir and her mascara is threatening to run and her blush has streaks in it and her hair doesn't look quite the same level of perfect that it had when she had intended on going to work that day. There was a certain degree of disguise that went on with getting ready to work. This was no performance; if it were, River would be handling it much better than she felt she was right now.

River doesn't look away from eye contact, doesn't back down or seem as though she is ashamed and perhaps that is what has remained- she didn't have enough pretense left to be ashamed. When River looked back at Samir, she wasn't thinking about being guarded or hiding the effects of losing Farrah, losing her friendships and support systems. She wasn't thinking about how much shehated the Artist, in a way that River had not known that she had hated someone until that threat was supposedly gone. It's not over, and she knows this is the case, but for now time between incarnations gives one a reprieve to process.

When River looked at Samir, there wasn't a question that she was going to hurt- that she did hurt. There was also no question that his presence, his closeness, his being there wasn't going to hurt her; it was, in fact, a welcomed presence. One that, under different circumstances would have been welcomed differently.

She leans in and presses her lips to his, not like she is drowning and not like she is desperate for just anyone, but rather, that it was his presence that she had wanted. River had the opportunity to drown her sorrows in any number of things, but this isn't drowning. Samir Lakhani isn't a placebo- he's not something she's taking until she feels better, blissfully unaware that his presence is a sugar pill because it's not. Because River Vasquez has never been the type to consider other human beings as tools.

She places her hand at the base of his neck, pulled in and was perhaps more adventurous than she would be otherwise. When River pulled back, she placed her forehead on his, her breathing is uneven.

Samir
By the time they pull back from the kiss they are both breathing ragged and fast. Aroused. He cannot deny that he is aroused even if his mind is also saddled with everything that is crawling around them. Even if he is assaulted by thoughts of what he could do if he let him thumb come half an inch higher up on her face. If he can imagine the feel of her eyeball--

He does not imagine that. He could. Maybe later he will. But right now he is in the moment and he overcomes what normally cripples him. They kiss. They kiss and she puts her hand at the base of his neck and a frisson of want comes up through the middle of him. She pulls back. He lets her pull back. Both of them panting.

His eyes lock on hers. Warm and understanding and waiting.

The Mercurial Elite wets his lips quick as if he had feared them dry. Anticipation in it.

"I..."

He wants to kiss her again. He wants to touch her body. He will stop if she wants him to. Amber eyes locked on hers and he doesn't know what to do with a woman who had just let down her guard because of him.

Fuck it. He takes a deep-deep breath and kisses her again. Leans in this time like he hadn't leaned in before. Like he can keep her here and present and centered if he keeps kissing her.

River
Samir has beautiful eyes; that hits her while she's looking back at him with her heart beating hard in her ears and she can taste the cold on her lips when she pulls back. In that juncture her gaze is so very dark, pupils wide as one is want to be when you have a physical reaction to arousal.

She could be any number of places at that juncture, were it not for the fact that she was there. Were it not for the fact that she was aware of how warm his skin was and they're both breathing like they're desperate for oxygen to hit their lungs. He starts to say something and all she does is smile, and at that juncture it's real. At that juncture there is delight and anticipation and her cheeks are flushed and her skin is warm.

He wants to kiss her, and so he does- takes a deep breath and she's leaning into him, eyes closed and River makes a sound that is most assuredly approval. Her hands move from his neck and there's an adjustment to be made, and she's moving positions from being just beside him to being more on top of him. It isn't the most graceful of movements, which is saying something given that she spends so much time being aware of her body and how it moves

But she's torn between trying to unbutton her shirt and getting herself into his lap so that kissing him isn't so hard, that he can be closer , so that the wind doesn't eat through the two of them as the temperature drops.

Samir
This is only the third time in his life he has ever been with a woman who wants him to take off her clothes. One day he may tell her about the first two. This time his brain is devoid of thoughts of anything else other than Now.

She leans into him. Hasn't asked shit about his own mental well-being. He asked about hers and they kissed and now she's kissing him back. She doesn't ask him if he's okay. Doesn't reassure him. Somehow the organic nature of kissing River doesn't make him aware of his own mental illness.

Then she's working on getting her shirt off and getting on top of him. Sam licks his lips again and rolls onto his back. Keeps his hands on her hips so she knows where he wants her. Rocks his own because he can't help it. She has roused him. He doesn't care about the buttons on her shirt. They're out in public. It's cold. They could freeze out here but he doesn't know where else to move her.

His discarded cigarette is nearby. He picks it up and glances away quick just to study it. Looks back at River and sees the abandonment in her eyes. Fuck it. They're both here. He flicks the cigarette away and sticks with Arabic.

"Enta ajibnii," he says. I like you.

[forces 2: nobody knows we're here lol. -1 practiced rote.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (4, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

River
She's about halfway through unbuttoning her shirt before she gives up on the process because it requires entirely too much manual dexterity, though she does make a little frustrated sound that sounds not entirely dissimilar to the sound that one makes when they've been trying to figure out a Rubik's cube for too long and they're ceding defeat. There's something about being present, though, something that one can say that this moment has done and it has rendered River a little less aware of things like forethought.

His hands are on her hips and she moves, a deliberate motion. There's something to be said about dancers and taking measured steps, knowing the careful mixture of grace and control. She isn't desperate but she does know precisely what it is that she wants and what she would like to be doing about that particular desire. She looks down at him, at his lips, at his face, at his eyes. She's not one to be afraid of keeping eye contact.

He says he likes her, and she stops- falters and forgets for a second and forces her brain to work, to play translation and there is a look of fondness there, keeps the smile on her face like she's making up for lost time.

"I like you, too, Sam," with a little bit of weight; it doesn't sound like she's just saying it because he said it. There's that moment of motion again, with more insistence that he isn't the only one that has needs and is thinking about Now and has been summarily reminded of more carnal needs.

The sound she makes is frustrated when she realizes-

"I'm wearing pants," like an apology, "gimme a minute?"

Samir
Sam is a smart young man. If he wants at a thing he can figure out how to get to it.

That fondness in River's eyes is enough to make his heart start to beat faster. That smile is enough to make that barrenness he felt in her before dissipate. She smiles. He wants to think that smile is real.

She likes him too.

He can do little to tamp down the groan of pleasure and wanting that statement dredges up out of him while she's straddling him. Something like apology when she realizes she's wearing pants and asks for a minute.

"A minute?" he says. Unbuttons her pants and starts to help her shuck them down. He ought to ask about birth control but what the fuck does he know. He's young and horny and a wizard besides.

She just needs to get her pants down around her ankles. Have some cooperation from her partner. Sam helps her get her pants down and then he grabs her by the hips and flips her onto her back. Kisses his way from her jaw to her throat to her sternum down her belly into the junction between her legs.

No one nearby even knows where here let alone can hear them. Sam kisses the place between her legs as if he has been here before and intends to stay until she comes.

River
There are things that one does not discuss with their potential lovers, and one of those things happens to do with monster death cramps. River had been one of those girls who snuck out to get birth control when she was sixteen, not because she had wanted to have sex, but because she was pretty sure acne was the devil and that for one week out of the month her uterus was actively trying to kill her. As such, she has done a very good job of making certain that her bases were very thoroughly covered.

It has benefits, yes, but she has concluded still that being able to be a functional human being every month greatly outweighs the benefits of not toting around a kid whilst one is continuing to usher along the karmic cycle. We digress, but the point is simple: Samir has dodged a bullet, because in that gigantic purse of hers there happen to be a very distinct lack of condoms. (Besides, that would make them people who litter. Not cool.)

She's mostly out of her pants, underthings pushed aside and not matching her bra in the slightest. River may well be a stripper, she might be a woman who shaves her legs almost religiously, but she very rarely leaves the house with the expressed intent that she is going to be having a lady or gentleman caller.

She rides ecstasy like she's surprised, tries to catch her breath but the moment is stifling. Sounds go from surprise to delight to tensing muscles and her hands are in his hair and she can't quite breathe and those moments of long-awaited orgasm sound like a moment of distress- like she'd been surprised- to utter elation. When she is face to face with him she kisses him, full on and needing while she's in the process of re positioning, urging his hips to meet with hers, taking the moment to roll him back onto his back again and getting back to that moment of union her pants had very rudely interrupted prior.

Samir
This is a Thing for men his age. To pleasure a woman with their mouth despite their own preconceived follicle standards. He has not shaved his face in over a week. He does not care for her own standards. Once he realizes she is taking pleasure from this he decides it appropriate to hold onto her hip and keep her close to him. To grab her other hand in his free one and pin it into the earth. The noises he makes are equivocal to her own. Pleasure to be had in pleasure making. Her fingers undo the knot in his hair. He doesn't give a damn.

When she comes he rests his forehead against her lower belly and keeps his mouth against her. Rides her out. He rises with her urging and when she seeks his mouth he presses it to hers. Kisses her hard and deep and presses his hips to hers without meaning to. Hard because of course he is. She urges him and he has to reach down to undo his jeans. A low noise of wanting in his throat and then he's on his back gasping with the shock of it.

He wants her.

His hands both of them go to her hips and knead while she works at her bindings.

River
He wants her. To say that she wanted him was an understatement, and there she is with her heart beating loud and fast again. There is a difference between what one does, though, when performing visual seduction and what one does when actually in the act.

There are facts that are clear, that she is flexible, that she is athletic, that despite the cold she feels like she's drenched in sweat and all she can do is move. There is a degree of intent there, that she's watching him, taking in those nonverbal cues and yes, her body reacts, but she's trying to keep up with him. She's trying to make certain that his needs are met as he'd done so graciously with her earlier.

Her hands rest on top of his, she keeps up with him, closing her eyes for a moment when the whole of the moment felt almost like too much and she had to catch her breath. She's a dancer, you see- her understanding of how the universe moves and flows and breaks down comes down to movement and what started at a steady tempo grew in pace and intensity. The young woman let out some moan of pleasure- uninhibited and unashamed.

And so very, very aware of where she was right now. Not where she'd been, or where she could be. Now was what mattered.

Samir
And here's the thing: he could have just lain back and let her do the work.

As they settle and come to watch each others' eyes from a different angle Sam appears to recalibrate his gaze on hers. As if she is the only one he has ever looked upon and felt his body moving towards. Restraint though the magnetism between them is clear. She can read the muscles in his truck stood out from his restraint and his eyes are molten looking up at her but still: he wants her to want this.

If she said 'no' he would stop. Pull her off him and find their clothes. River knows this just from looking at him.

But she puts him on his back and helps him help her out of pants. He is breathing hard through his nostrils as she settles herself atop him. When they dock he takes in a hard breath and tries but fails to not close his eyes.

As her body settles against his he looses a moan only a human could make. Uses his elbows to sit up. Wraps one arm around her waist and the other around her shoulders. Lets his hand cradle the back of her head as he starts to move his hips beneath hers.

He doesn't mean to. He moans. Clutches hard onto her waist. Buries his face in her neck and goes onto bury her name there.

River
That's part of why this is happening, why she is so incredibly keyed in and unafraid to be laid bare. She looks in his eyes, and River knows that if she said something- perhaps even if she didn't say something- if she didn't want this then he would stop. If she said 'no', this would be over and there would not be a moment of negotiation. She wouldn't need to apologize or feel like she'd done something wrong- there's something very important about that.

Which was what made the reaction important, that everything in this experience had been nothing but a very emphatic yes. And this was an emphatic yes, he didn't make her do all the work on her own, he didn't make her put on some kind of performance, and she moved with him. His hips move beneath hers and she is already struggling to catch her breath, arms around him like she's afraid he might fall off the earth, like she can't bear the thought of being anywhere but where she was.

Her hair wasn't coiffed and perfect anymore, she bites her lip as the world tries to narrow to pinpoint precision. "Sam?" with that aching want, with that sound in her voice like there was nothing but pleasure in saying his name.

It's the last coherent thing she gets out, there's a cry of pleasure, her muscles tense, movements more desperate and her body seizes taut and overwhelmed around him for a second. She closes her eyes tightly, breathing pulled sharp like she took a step wrong and lost her balance- tumbled over proverbial edges.

Samir
Call it an irony: the thing that keeps him from others is the thing that lets him get near enough to see their fissures in the first place.

They lock eyes in the instant before their bodies cease to claim a boundary and he moans and gasps for breath then. Says her name and she owns it. Moves above him as if she knows it. As if this is where she belongs and if she didn't she would tell him. That she moves in stride with him makes him moan again and louder. Fuck.

"River," he says. Not tormented though he sure as shit sounds like it. Wrought, sure. He is wrought.

Then she says his name as if it is a question. Shorthand even. He hates it when people he likes call him by his government name.

Before he can cobble together a response she's coming. Sam tightens his hold around her waist. On the back of her head. Holds her like this is the most important thing he could ever witness and he would be intent to let her rest but even resting as he was in the wake of that his body betrayed itself.

He cries her name. Still inside him. Their eyes meet and they want the same thing. He is looking her right in the eye about to call her on it maybe when his own end claims him. He falls down flash on his pact and doesn't give a fuck what the wedding is doing.

Samir
[I have literally zero idea what that last sentence means and hereby strike it from the record praise Jesus halleujah]

River
When it's all done, she's holding onto him like they'd lived through a right and proper disaster. She's holding onto him like she can't bring herself to think of a reason to let him go and her heart is beating too fast and her thighs are trembling and fuck her whole body is tense and trying to work itself back out to a state that isn't doubled over itself.

She breathes like she might start crying, but there is the very subtle hitch that gives it more the indication that she sounds like she ran a marathon she was woefully unprepared for. River exhales, long and ragged and she closes her eyes. Her body is insistent that she needs to take a second, and so she does.

Her right hand reaches up for a second, finds his hair and tries to smooth it out for a moment.

"I messed your hair up," she tells him, and it sounds like an apology in the way that her wearing pants was an apology.