[If laughter can't be considered a threat, the words that follow certainly should be:] Someone's gonna punch that fucking mouth if you don't watch out, stranger.
[ Her voice is shrill as she suddenly aims another clumsy punch to his face, before reaching for his neck just he had already done to her. Now more than ever she wishes she was strong enough to truly hurt him, to break and bend him out of shape and vent every molecule of anger out of herself. She's an angry, volatile person, one way or another, but this is a new level. Bass can see right through her, and she hates that. ]
[Fine, then. Bass won't waste any more time - he's tired of her refutations and of how irritatingly desperate her denial has become anyway. When Cat clasps her hand around his neck, his own grabs her wrist and twists the arm around her back, forcing her to turn before he pushes her against the wall in a swift movement. It's a short-fused reaction for such an effective move - rougher than what he's accustomed her to - yet there is no change in the volume of his voice, temple resting against hers.]
Tell me again, Cat: What am I supposed to do with you?
[ She cries out loudly with pain as Bass twists her arm, her eyes glazing with tears of discomfort. Somehow, she is still unfraid. Maybe her rage is obscuring her capacity to be frightened of what Bass might do, maybe she is just past the point of giving a damn about what could happen to her. Yet, of all things, she finally stops squirming and fighting him when their foreheads connect. Somehow it feels like that movement more than anything else pins her into place. Breathing heavily, she stares at him with wide eyes, alarmed by this form of proximity.
Her voice has finally been worn down to a quiet, breathless murmur, but it hasn't lost its edge. ]
I don't know. [ And again: ] Whatever the hell you want.
[Her cry goes unheard, and he barely even notices that she's finally stopped fighting back. His shoulders are pressing against her back, his leg against her knee pit, both of them facing the wall. While Cat stares at him in alarm, Bass's gaze gets lost somewhere far from where they stand, unfocused and unreadable. It's only then that he notices how sharply he's breathing, how fast his heart is pumping in this moment of quiet.
Cat's arm is released. Bass turns her around and watches her, searching for a sign of something he can't quite describe in her eyes. Hope, maybe? A secret she's trying to make him understand she can't reveal? Anything that can make sense of this, anything that can help him understand why she's come to this point.
He can't find it.
People never look at Bass and see a contemplative man. It's hard to call him emotional when the most anyone can snatch from him is a provocative smile or a focused glare accentuated by the blood shining on his skin in the heat of battle. Fox - the one man who knows him better than anyone else, the one man to whom Bass owes his entire truthfulness and can call his family in everything but their blood - even he can't always guess what's on his brother's mind. Bass often sees what's on his, but now he wonders if that's only been a reflection of his own concerns.
They'd been the perfect trinity of strength and trust, with their own code of honor and disregard for anyone else's ambition. Fox and Cat were working to extend the reaches of the world that had been created before them while Bass was just content to be in it with them. Now that world seems increasingly more volatile as time goes on, threatening to collapse right in front of him, and he can't seem to do anything to make Cat see that he doesn't want to lose it. Suffice to say his silence is not easily broken, this being no exception - for as much as he's bursting at the seams with the frustration and helplessness, nothing can quite pull the words out of his head.
The quiet stops. The helplessness, the resentment seem to sink in his chest and become something else, and in that moment Cat becomes someone else: still the girl he met years back, but changed by the woman now staring up at him, eyes and mouth shaped by an anxiety that he can't fix. He's seen how dangerous emotions are - fugitive devices that lead to actions with permanent, irreversible consequences, the very same that are turning Cat into the perfect portrait of lessons unlearned.
(Maybe he wouldn't have been committing this mistake if he'd been able to see the very same in himself.)
It doesn't feel like a kiss. It's too rough, too rushed, too intense and mindless, still his hands are cupping her face and his lips are locked with hers. If he'd struggled to be emotionless before, now every thought and shred of common sense are gone, commanded by that energy he had managed to contain so well. There's no joy or conscience in it, and Bass cann't bring himself to care.]
[ If it weren't for Fox and his ambitions, maybe Cat would have never been like this. She is the sort of person that attaches herself to others with the strength of a barnacle, stubborn and impossible to remove. She soaks in their goals and makes them her own, she craves the lead of others, she- she could think for herself, and she does, given how utterly irreverent she can be to Fox when no one else (except Bass) is looking - but she sees so little importance in herself.
She has always told Fox that he shouldn't get attached. It seems hypocritical considering their relationship invariably goes beyond mere friendship, but she has always treated it, in a manner of speaking, roughly. No matter how many nights she might have spent with him, she has never allowed it to be soft, or meaningful. If he tries to hold her, she wriggles and punches him in the shoulder, she scowls and tells him he's getting soft. In public she is only a faithful subject, never speaking against him, quiet and always frowning. Yet, she doesn't realise that she does not hold herself to the same standard. No matter how hard she pushes him to focus ultimately on anything but herself, she seems to live her life around him. She holds no one else in higher regard, and to say that she loved him would not necessarily be an exaggeration, even if it is by no means in a conventional form.
As Bass turns her around, she almost considers fighting past him, but something in his expression stops her, even though she can't identify what it is. That is what allows Bass to catch her off guard.
The pressure of Bass' mouth against hers surprises her in a way that she has never experienced before. She has always given herself to Fox so readily and with such devotion that the very thought of something like this - even though this is more rough and intense than anything she has ever felt before - with anyone else has never even crossed her mind. Her loyalty is the very specific, blinkered type that keeps her eyes on one thing and one thing only, except something else has just slammed right into her and turned everything upside down. In any other situation, with anyone else, she would probably be finding the nearest blunt object and smashing it into something (no, someone) with all the strength she can muster, but with Bass... there's a pause, where she does nothing. She doesn't try to kiss him back, she stays still as a corpse beneath the weight of his body, her eyes the widest they have ever been. Then something grips her.
With a sudden loss of inhibition she reaches her hands upwards, one gripping Bass' shirt at the shoulder, the other curling around his neck, nails scraping at the nape of his neck as she returns the kiss just as fiercely. The hand on his shoulder yanks him closer, until their hips are pressed together, until there is almost no part of them that isn't touching. ]
[At any other time, Cat's own reaction would be a surprise - an unpleasant one, at that. The sense of loyalty that binds him to Fox and kept the girl out of any such thoughts until now is entirely gone, pushed aside by instinct, forgotten somewhere while his hand moves down to her hip and slides under her right leg, propping her up against the wall and against him. At some point his teeth come into play, brought out by voiceless complaints at the way her nails press against his skin until he moves to grasp another heavy kiss.
Reality seems to shift back into place - almost - when Bass leans away, breathing sharply, eyes locked on Cat's. He asks himself what he's doing and questions, almost alarmed, why she's responding to it, both of their actions striking him as nothing less than unrecognizable.
She doesn't resist the hand under her leg, she responds to teeth with teeth, arching her back towards him, her skin crawling with heat and a previously unknown level of intensity. Fox has never kissed her like this, he has never tried to take control like this, this- it's something else. It's almost surreal. Biting at his lower lip, Cat wishes bitterly that he wouldn't keep his hair so damn short for a moment. There's nothing to bloody well hold onto here. Her fingers close around mostly empty air, much to her irritation. It means that she has to revise what she's used to, change her habitual movements.
There might have been a semblance of understanding and sense present in Cat's mind when when Bass pulls back, but it is firmly trampled by whatever it is that has otherwise taken over her. Her eyes snap open again, and the hand on his neck does not allow him to go very far. She scowls ferociously, her cheeks flushed faintly pink, with both surprise and vague embarrassment, but her eyes are so bright and so determined to stay on his.
Just don't leave me like this, she thinks to herself again. Especially not like this. ]
[Bass lowers his eyes and lets her keep him close, unseeing, though he never allows his muscles to relax. The adrenaline is still in his blood, in the rhythm of his breathing, shoulders tense, voice hushed by something close to a whisper (nowhere near as soft as one) without intonation. His hand slides around her thigh again, his forehead practically against hers.]
What the fuck are we doing.
[He isn't telling her to stop; he doesn't intend to move away. Bass knows he should, but his actions won't follow that thought.]
[ Her voice is - surprisingly - on a similar level to his, and as she speaks she closes her eyes again, exhaling heavily, her body wiring mixed signals through her body. Cat's lips want to find his again, the hand on his shoulder is curling into a fist that she desperately wants to smash into his face, and her heart is beating so hard and fast that she can't tell if it's excitement or some sort of aching fear that she's never before experienced. ]
Don't want to think about it.
[ Just want to do it. Her grip on him doesn't slacken, not for a moment. ]
[Her answer isn't good enough - no answer could be - but it doesn't invite any more questions, either. Instead Bass just looks back at her, his mouth lingering somewhere over her lips, his hand resting on her clothes until he makes a decision. No matter what he chooses, however, it's already too late. He betrayed Fox's trust in so many ways, and what he brings back to his King will either be the truth that will end them or the lie that will haunt him. It's a matter of how far they go, now.
(Don't want to think about it.)
There's barely any more waiting until both hands find her legs, holding the girl up to wrap them around his waist, once again locked in a kiss.]
[ Is it relief she feels flooding her when Bass says nothing else? She can't be sure. The only thing she registers is that Bass' lips are on hers again, that she is complying readily, gripping his body between her thighs. She kisses him back roughly and a little clumsily, both arms now curled around his neck, a soft noise of pleasure (which she would rather deny that she feels) sliding from the back of her throat. Part of her mind is still racing. Why Bass? Why is he doing this to her? Why is he clouding everything that she thought was so clear in her mind? For a moment, she thinks about Fox. Just for a moment, but the thought is drowned by the fact that she just doesn't want Bass to stop.
She breaks the kiss only slightly, biting sharply at his lower lip as she tries to catch her breath, which is now heavy and shallow, her eyes squeezed as tightly shut as she can manage. ]
[He makes a sound, somewhere between a soft grunt and something warmer, leaning into the kiss before his hands let go of her and force his jacket off his shoulders. There's no stopping this, not with them. Their fights aren't over until unavoidable circumstances force them apart; there is no clear winner until one of them has exhausted his or her share. Bass is either too proud or too senseless to ever acknowledge he's had enough, and this won't be any different.]
[ She helps to push the jacket off him, hand slipping down to curl her fingers into his shirt, tugging and pulling at it, feeling at his chest through the fabric. In an ideal world she'd shrug off her jacket too, but sandwiched between Bass and a wall, she settles for trying to unclothe him instead. There is no rational thought involved here, maybe no thought of any kind. It's buried, forgotten instinct; this is happening, therefore this is the response. Nothing else. ]
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[ Her voice is shrill as she suddenly aims another clumsy punch to his face, before reaching for his neck just he had already done to her. Now more than ever she wishes she was strong enough to truly hurt him, to break and bend him out of shape and vent every molecule of anger out of herself. She's an angry, volatile person, one way or another, but this is a new level. Bass can see right through her, and she hates that. ]
Just shut the fuck up.
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Tell me again, Cat: What am I supposed to do with you?
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Her voice has finally been worn down to a quiet, breathless murmur, but it hasn't lost its edge. ]
I don't know. [ And again: ] Whatever the hell you want.
[ Just don't leave me like this. ]
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Cat's arm is released. Bass turns her around and watches her, searching for a sign of something he can't quite describe in her eyes. Hope, maybe? A secret she's trying to make him understand she can't reveal? Anything that can make sense of this, anything that can help him understand why she's come to this point.
He can't find it.
People never look at Bass and see a contemplative man. It's hard to call him emotional when the most anyone can snatch from him is a provocative smile or a focused glare accentuated by the blood shining on his skin in the heat of battle. Fox - the one man who knows him better than anyone else, the one man to whom Bass owes his entire truthfulness and can call his family in everything but their blood - even he can't always guess what's on his brother's mind. Bass often sees what's on his, but now he wonders if that's only been a reflection of his own concerns.
They'd been the perfect trinity of strength and trust, with their own code of honor and disregard for anyone else's ambition. Fox and Cat were working to extend the reaches of the world that had been created before them while Bass was just content to be in it with them. Now that world seems increasingly more volatile as time goes on, threatening to collapse right in front of him, and he can't seem to do anything to make Cat see that he doesn't want to lose it. Suffice to say his silence is not easily broken, this being no exception - for as much as he's bursting at the seams with the frustration and helplessness, nothing can quite pull the words out of his head.
The quiet stops. The helplessness, the resentment seem to sink in his chest and become something else, and in that moment Cat becomes someone else: still the girl he met years back, but changed by the woman now staring up at him, eyes and mouth shaped by an anxiety that he can't fix. He's seen how dangerous emotions are - fugitive devices that lead to actions with permanent, irreversible consequences, the very same that are turning Cat into the perfect portrait of lessons unlearned.
(Maybe he wouldn't have been committing this mistake if he'd been able to see the very same in himself.)
It doesn't feel like a kiss. It's too rough, too rushed, too intense and mindless, still his hands are cupping her face and his lips are locked with hers. If he'd struggled to be emotionless before, now every thought and shred of common sense are gone, commanded by that energy he had managed to contain so well. There's no joy or conscience in it, and Bass cann't bring himself to care.]
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She has always told Fox that he shouldn't get attached. It seems hypocritical considering their relationship invariably goes beyond mere friendship, but she has always treated it, in a manner of speaking, roughly. No matter how many nights she might have spent with him, she has never allowed it to be soft, or meaningful. If he tries to hold her, she wriggles and punches him in the shoulder, she scowls and tells him he's getting soft. In public she is only a faithful subject, never speaking against him, quiet and always frowning. Yet, she doesn't realise that she does not hold herself to the same standard. No matter how hard she pushes him to focus ultimately on anything but herself, she seems to live her life around him. She holds no one else in higher regard, and to say that she loved him would not necessarily be an exaggeration, even if it is by no means in a conventional form.
As Bass turns her around, she almost considers fighting past him, but something in his expression stops her, even though she can't identify what it is. That is what allows Bass to catch her off guard.
The pressure of Bass' mouth against hers surprises her in a way that she has never experienced before. She has always given herself to Fox so readily and with such devotion that the very thought of something like this - even though this is more rough and intense than anything she has ever felt before - with anyone else has never even crossed her mind. Her loyalty is the very specific, blinkered type that keeps her eyes on one thing and one thing only, except something else has just slammed right into her and turned everything upside down. In any other situation, with anyone else, she would probably be finding the nearest blunt object and smashing it into something (no, someone) with all the strength she can muster, but with Bass... there's a pause, where she does nothing. She doesn't try to kiss him back, she stays still as a corpse beneath the weight of his body, her eyes the widest they have ever been. Then something grips her.
With a sudden loss of inhibition she reaches her hands upwards, one gripping Bass' shirt at the shoulder, the other curling around his neck, nails scraping at the nape of his neck as she returns the kiss just as fiercely. The hand on his shoulder yanks him closer, until their hips are pressed together, until there is almost no part of them that isn't touching. ]
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Reality seems to shift back into place - almost - when Bass leans away, breathing sharply, eyes locked on Cat's. He asks himself what he's doing and questions, almost alarmed, why she's responding to it, both of their actions striking him as nothing less than unrecognizable.
This won't end well.]
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She doesn't resist the hand under her leg, she responds to teeth with teeth, arching her back towards him, her skin crawling with heat and a previously unknown level of intensity. Fox has never kissed her like this, he has never tried to take control like this, this- it's something else. It's almost surreal. Biting at his lower lip, Cat wishes bitterly that he wouldn't keep his hair so damn short for a moment. There's nothing to bloody well hold onto here. Her fingers close around mostly empty air, much to her irritation. It means that she has to revise what she's used to, change her habitual movements.
There might have been a semblance of understanding and sense present in Cat's mind when when Bass pulls back, but it is firmly trampled by whatever it is that has otherwise taken over her. Her eyes snap open again, and the hand on his neck does not allow him to go very far. She scowls ferociously, her cheeks flushed faintly pink, with both surprise and vague embarrassment, but her eyes are so bright and so determined to stay on his.
Just don't leave me like this, she thinks to herself again. Especially not like this. ]
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What the fuck are we doing.
[He isn't telling her to stop; he doesn't intend to move away. Bass knows he should, but his actions won't follow that thought.]
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[ Her voice is - surprisingly - on a similar level to his, and as she speaks she closes her eyes again, exhaling heavily, her body wiring mixed signals through her body. Cat's lips want to find his again, the hand on his shoulder is curling into a fist that she desperately wants to smash into his face, and her heart is beating so hard and fast that she can't tell if it's excitement or some sort of aching fear that she's never before experienced. ]
Don't want to think about it.
[ Just want to do it. Her grip on him doesn't slacken, not for a moment. ]
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(Don't want to think about it.)
There's barely any more waiting until both hands find her legs, holding the girl up to wrap them around his waist, once again locked in a kiss.]
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She breaks the kiss only slightly, biting sharply at his lower lip as she tries to catch her breath, which is now heavy and shallow, her eyes squeezed as tightly shut as she can manage. ]
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