moneypenny | contact ✖ ic

[ Moneypenny exhales lightly, too still to drowsy to bring herself to properly laugh. She peddles dreams for a living and unlike Iain's, hers are worth their weight in superlatives (whether that be the very best or the very worst, they are always extreme) so perhaps she disagrees. ]

Nah, [ she says softly, but she doesn't seem to mind. ] Jus' a bit. Here an' there.

[ The motion is slow and sleep-ridden but clear as she pulls slightly on Iain's hip. (C'mhere.) ]

[ Iain rolls onto his stomach, draping one arm over her waist as he nips once at the curve of her jaw, the gesture just as lazy as hers.

(His concerns almost flicker away completely, replaced by the same contentment he'd felt last night. The same complacency, he suspects Baby Jane might say.

Stop. Please.) ]

I assume this means your getting more of it isn't much of a priority.

[ Her back bows up off of the bed as she stretches, the crown of her head pushing back into the pillow as her hips pull upward and her toes curl against the mattress. If there's a yawn, Moneypenny stifles it with the back of her hand, the other tracing an idle path from his hips to his ass to the small of his back.

(Not on your life.)

She grins at the ceiling, her eyes threatening to slip closed again. ] That your way of offerin' t'keep me awake, sweets? [ Moneypenny doesn't know when his flight is, though she assumes it's today. Secretly she hopes that it's later rather than sooner, that still has a few more hours of this and him before he ricochets off to wherever he needs to be next. ] Y'know I'd never give up another go at you.

[ Lazily: ] Maybe. [ Iain's flight leaves in the early afternoon. The countdown clock has already started, as such (he's punctual), but there's still time to spare. Time to remind himself why he's given up what he has before he has to go back to dealing with the voices in his head. Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but in this particular case, he prefers the immediacy brought by deliberate contact.

(What about yours?)

Maybe is an answer he follows up with silence, choosing to write the yes, yes, yes, across the line of her neck, her jaw, and the hollow behind her ear. ]

[ Moneypenny hums -- so deep and so low in her throat that it's practically a purr against Iain's chest as she arches herself off the mattress again, this time to meet him. There are bruises on her hips and a cut on the inside of her cheek (battle scars from the night before) but MP is more than willing to let Iain paint her black and blue if that means getting to carry him with her for a little while longer. (A cut, a limp, a burn -- it didn't matter, they each had their charms, so long as they were from him.) She curls her fingers into his hair, tugging him up to her mouth for a kiss.

(Already on the table. Ante up, baby.) ] I like your 'maybe's. [ Moneypenny's smile complicates the kiss, makes it crooked and taut. ] Follow-through's always proper.

[ (Stay longer. Moneypenny already knows that's not an option. ]

[ Iain pulls himself further up the bed, his hand sliding from Moneypenny's waist to find the bedsheets on the other side of her, one shoulder arching over her frame. ]

Glad you noticed, [ he murmurs, his other hand brushing back her bangs before his fingers hook themselves about the base of her neck (it's not a threatening kind of grasp).

(Sorry, babe.) Start missing appointments once and you never stop. Start missing appointments and you start making enemies, too. He's learned his lesson already, as far as moderation and control are concerned. ]

Edited 2011-08-04 13:21 (UTC)

[ She knows he won't hurt her, not beyond those mingled declarations of lust and love, the shared ache that smear across one another's bodies, the things that linger long after they've been pulled apart. Moneypenny pushes herself up into Iain's hand, like she's asking for those collaring fingers to do their worst (to hold her and keep her; again, to stay). ]

Clever like that, I am. [ This is the part when Moneypenny kisses him, wraps her thighs around his waist and shoves an impolite hand between the two of them while muttering a chorus of c'mon, c'mon. But this time it's different because, for a moment, she hesitates. Not a flinch, but still a flaw, her eyebrows lifting as if in curiosity of her own emotions. It's a look that warns caution, not to Iain, but to herself; a look but don't touch (It's something she's never thought before when it comes him; even at first glance she was gearing to go.)

She won't ask him to break his appointments (MP's a businesswoman, too, even if she doesn't look it), won't try to twist him to abandon plans already made. But she wants him for more than a day, two days, three at the most. She wants a week, a week and a half; she wants a place they've never been. She wants anonymity from everyone and everything except one another. Not indefinitely, but for a little while. Lessons in how to disappear completely and never be found.

(Don't feed me sorry. Feed me yes.) ]

[ Iain's grip tightens, although it's still with the pads of his fingers and his palm that he presses down. (No nails.)

He hums his answer into her mouth, the noise hitching once as her hand slides down his front. (The hesitation is not something he fails to register, although he doesn't let any of his surprise at the beat show through. He remembers the first couple of times they'd met, he'd nearly been put off completely — but always drawn back, for whatever reason. He'd said no, and he hadn't been interested in offering up any excuses, and yet, somewhere along the way, there'd been a yes, and here they were.)

As far as disappearing is concerned, he wouldn't say no. His plans only ever extend so far, and if there's time, then fine. (More than fine.) He knows how to disappear (his apartment in Delphi is one that, now, only two living souls — him included — have ever seen the inside of, or even know the existence of), how to hide away, but that's not the issue. The issue is darling, dear Baby Jane. His need to survive. Something — something — needs to happen between now and then.

(Yes. Yes. Perhaps not yes, now, but still. Yes.) ]

[ Yes. Something will happen. And whatever that something turns out to be, it will not be pleasant but it will be -- by the estimations of at least part of his subconscious -- necessary. Baby Jane is just a dream and Iain is wide awake so it is not her voice that skates across the surface of his mind. But it's not wholly his voice either. ]

You know me so well. Don't you. (http://sixwordstories.livejournal.com/60316228.html?thread=1780531012#t1780531012)

[ (Don't struggle.) ]

[ There's something undeniably satisfying in the curl of Iain's hand around her throat, that even sort of pressure that thins her breath, making the whole room shrink around them. The world bends, the walls bow and everything not-them seems to contract slightly, grow dim -- as if the gravity of her body to his was something more tangible than the tug in her chest, the skip of her heart, the ache in her lungs (not enough, not enough, I love you, now please).

Her mouth opens when she finally finds what she's looking for -- his dry heat against her belly and a surprising wetness between her legs. (Maybe she had been dreaming after all. Or maybe there's a four letter word that's dirtier than fuck and they've spent all night murmuring it into one another's mouths.) A noise escapes her now, pluming up from where it had been previously caught in the back of her throat; it's a moan and a gasp and a yes, you said yes as Moneypenny's hips roll and her thighs tighten. Her teeth close once onto the open air between them with a loud and audible clack but there's something subdued about the way she does it. Resignation, maybe; blissfully so.

(Harder. Tighter. Love me, dear, love me. Love me raw.) Moneypenny's eyes flutter shut. (Then love me some more.) ]

[ (Still — a swallow of breath against the oncoming storm. I want this. You will not take this from me. Almost foolish, perhaps, insomuch as the argument is being held by opposing parts of himself.)

As Moneypenny rolls her hips, Iain's buck forward, and for once, a noise slips past his lips, echoing in his open mouth. (In the single noise, a chorus of yeses, repetitions of that four-letter word and an acknowledgment of shed armor, a small surrender. When I have no more love left to give I'll love you some more.) ]

[ (There was a time -- several years; not many but notable, given Moneypenny's age -- when she'd all but forgotten what it was like to be vulnerable. That's when she'd earned the sharper edges to her reputation, when she'd stabbed the only boy she thought she could trust and ran off with his PASIV to make a name for herself. Natalia -- her name and her past -- had haunted her then, like an unwanted ghost, until she found the ways and means to completely burn the spectre from the face of the earth and all the ties that it had along with it.

It's only now, in knowing Iain, in wanting him and loving him, that she's found need of it again -- something to forfeit, a submission. The greatest one that she knows how to give.)

The muscles of her legs complain as she spreads them a little wider, let's Iain in a little closer, but it's a good kind of pain. Like the ache that she feels when eats the wordless sounds from his very mouth, breathes his breath and tastes the scratching stubble of his cheek. ]

How long? [ The words are little more than an exhale.

(Until you leave. Until I see you again. Until you stay. Until we're done.) ]

[ Iain almost swallows the two words up completely. (Don't ask. Please don't ask me that. I don't know. I don't know.

He hates himself, for that. He isn't used to not knowing — hasn't been for a long time. Perhaps, for some smaller matter, it'd be something he could let go, but the devil is in the details, and he's afraid the devil will run rampant. He'd almost forgotten what fear was like, too.)

The scape of his back shifts and winds, the muscles underneath like the gears of a clock, each sure of its place where his thoughts are not. He knows what to do with his body, with his hands, but his weak point bleeds, cut open like a red stripe, uncertainty furling from the wound. (He'll bleed out if he's not careful.) ]

[ Moneypenny knows that Iain has always been economical with his words, that he doesn't speak unless it's absolutely necessary (a warning, a dismissal, a hello, darling). She knows she shouldn't expect an answer.

(But that doesn't mean she can't feel it -- an overwhelming tightness in her chest -- when he doesn't.)

She presses herself into him in response, her tongue filling the hollow of his mouth as if somehow his answer is buried there, hiding, and all MP has to do is unearth it through the clever use of lip and tongue and teeth. She doesn't even need words, just another noise, maybe two. A shiver that travels down the length of his back like Morse code, his body to hers; a shudder. A tightness in his thighs, his fingers curling round her throat.

Both hands in his hair, she pulls his face up and away from hers even though her mouth attempts to chase after him, wet teeth catching the light between them. Far enough so that he has no choice but to look at her -- her makeup smeared lashes, her mouth painted only by flush, her sleep-ridden eyes. It's a reminder to him that she's open and she's his and that no, she's still not afraid of him, not yet.

(Anything, she pleads. Give me anything. And then realizes that beggars can't be choosers, though she's not sure anymore which of them is which.) ]

Edited 2011-08-06 11:13 (UTC)

[ (I love you. I love you. And, just barely: isn't that enough?

This is all I have left to give you. (http://neaten.livejournal.com/441.html?thread=26809#t26809))

Still, Iain's back arches, spine like the silhouette of the ramparts of castle raised up high. The hand he has on her throat pushes upward, fingers pressing into the outline of her jaw, pressure now in that direction as opposed to simply down. As her fingers thread through his hair, he bares his teeth, something close to a snarl slipping past his lips as she pulls his head back.

(She's beautiful. He has never had any reservations on this point.)

His eyebrows turn up as he regards her, the expression almost sad, as though to say you should be, you really should be; I'm terrified of you. As best he can, he strains against her grasp, his mouth chasing after hers despite the sharp pain in his scalp. ]

[ Afraid is not an option. Maybe was in the past -- that tight rope, razor blade walk between wanting him and needing him -- but Moneypenny's gone all in now, pushed all of her chips to the center of the table with both hands (her apartment, her mothertongue, her name). Folding's not an option. Running's not an option.

There's just this and more this. (That's what she's wanted from the start.)

Longing burns in her belly and underneath her nails. (No one's ever managed it as well as Iain can and, as far as she's concerned, now no one ever will.) She wants to feel his mouth on hers again, wants him to steal her very breath away; but despite this, her fingers just curl into his hair tighter. Moneypenny's forearms strain with the effort of keeping him held back and after a while, they start to burn too Just far enough away that he feel her panting against his face but not close enough to actually steal a taste. (Want me, her eyes seem to say even though he's already there pressed between her legs; even though he's got her pinned through the heart like an insect kept in a glass box to hoard over. Want me more.)

Just to prove how unafraid she is, Moneypenny gives a voice to the tumult that stirs in her chest and behind those half-lowered lids. ] Stay, [ she tells him, even though they both know that he won't.

(Stay today. Stay tomorrow. Stay indefinitely. Moneypenny doesn't clarify which. She doesn't need to.) ]

[ (What Iain is, is hers. The whole of him. Where she is an insect in a glass box, he is a framed map as mounted on the wall, skin stretched out for her to read at her leisure, star after star after star written across his body; this is who I am, in the basest of senses. No one else has seen his scars, not in their entirety.)

He bares his teeth, both at her touch and at that single word. (I'll try. I'll try, I swear.)

The same flame, the same want consumes him (ruin and damnation, but fuck it — I will never want anything but you), in a way that he knows will cost him (them), in the end. They've both surrendered; no one has the upper hand, no one is in control.

(If you stay, I will.) ]

[ They had a rule once, an unwritten one. It was so basic, it never demanded spelling out or mutual agreement; it just was, there between them, as if it fitted in place by some invisible hand. Inevitable as gravity and just as unavoidable. (Ask for a kiss, beg for a fuck, but there are somethings you don't say outloud. Otherwise, they'll come back to haunt you, like ghosts, like boogeymen, like all of those things that go bump in the night. The worst types of dreams. The kind you can't shake.)

Moneypenny hooks her ankles together and presses them down against the small of Iain's back, just where his tailbone gives way to the curve of his ass, just hard enough that his hips have no where but go forward and press flush against her. She shudders, her fingers letting loose of his hair in order to find some kind of grip on his shoulders. Her voice trembles and then breaks, the sentence studded with a caught breath, a small gasp. ]

I'll stay. Long as— long as you like. Just say you will too. Say— so I can hear.

[ (Moneypenny breaks the rule.) ]

Edited 2011-08-10 07:03 (UTC)

[ At first, Iain wonders if he's just imagining it. She wouldn't, would she? She wouldn't say the words out loud.

His hand leaves her neck to wind in her honey blonde hair, the other curling into a fist in the sheets of the bed as his frame rocks against hers. There's a radio silence, a pause, one that says the line has been crossed and, he supposes, there's no turning back. Slowly, he lets his lips trail along her jaw, just where his fingers had been, until they reach her ear.

Hoarse: ] I'll stay.

[ (The worst part of it, he thinks, is that no matter what either of them does, there's no guarantee of it.) ]

[ Moneypenny gasps. Or maybe she sighs. All Iain knows is that the breath escapes her lips audibly, condenses warmly against the side of his face and in his hair as her body curls around his. On the darkened insides of his lids something flickers, a lack of light. ]

No. You won't.

Edited 2011-08-10 20:05 (UTC)

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