I'd left him dreaming [closed]

[deservesadaisy]

Who: Ivan and Ilde
What: He's making a habit of turning up on doorsteps.
Where: Villa Roassieux
When: Shortly after receiving this text
Notes: It's just a one-night stand. That kept happening. Exclusively. And then he took care of her dog. ...you are no longer fooling anyone, guys.
Warnings: None yet, but give it time.

Ivan is not going to dignify that text with a reply. Instead he turns up, very shortly afterward, on her doorstep, expression closed.

At least he brought her purse with him.

Comments

[deservesadaisy]

"Nothing requiring urgent attention. I finally got a friend from home to stop hanging up on me." Ilde will love Daniil, he has no doubt.

"The militia continue to be charming."

[rhinemaid]

Not Mitchell, she surmises, since it seems oddly specific and he knows she and Mitchell are already acquainted. (She wonders vaguely if they've cleared up why he punched him, yet, but Ivan hasn't talked to her about that at all and she doesn't feel anywhere close to being up to pressing him on it now.)

"That's comforting." It isn't.

[deservesadaisy]

"We didn't solve any problems without you," he says, mildly wry as he comes to sit on the edge of the tub.

[rhinemaid]

"It just--" Ilde makes a vague gesture that doesn't really mean anything; it just seems like more should have changed. She knows, intellectually, that she was gone much less time for Baedal than for herself and that doesn't change the fact that she's spent weeks away in an intense situation and the familiarity is in and of itself disorienting. Like stepping back into something she'd come close to convincing herself was gone, and not knowing how exactly to readjust. To fit, again.

...she shuts the taps off, and refocuses on simple things; how much water a bath actually needs if it's going to accommodate two adults, why did she put on a shirt with so many fucking buttons.

[deservesadaisy]

He reaches out, slow enough not to startle her, but fluid. If she doesn't stop him, he helps with the buttons. "It wasn't long, here."

[rhinemaid]

"A few days." It's easier just to drop her hands and let him do it, so she does, resting her hip against the side of the bath. "Cindy told me, when she got me from the arrival room."

She feels strange about having left the razorblades there, but there's not really anything she can do about it--

Well, they have a lost and found--

Does she really want to call about that.

[deservesadaisy]

He's quiet a moment, helping her undress. "I fed your dog," he says, eventually, with a wry little smile - his eyes on his fingers, not her face.

[rhinemaid]

"You hate my dog," she points out, as though he needs reminded; she sounds obscurely pleased, all the same. And she is, generally - Orion is fine, and it's comforting to know he wasn't completely neglected in their absence. She's been fussing about that, quietly, since she gathered herself together enough to start worrying about something other than herself or Sonja.

[deservesadaisy]

"I'm not much of a pet person." It might have been self evident. "But no one else was feeding him."

It would have been important to Ilde, he thought at the time.

[rhinemaid]

"Thank you," she says, kissing him before she gets into the bath, leaning her weight against her hand against his thigh. "I guess I'm glad it was shorter here for him." And for Ivan, and for the others who missed her, but only Orion actually relies on her for care.

[deservesadaisy]

"I'd have probably seen if Hasibe wanted him, eventually." While tacitly adopting him himself, most likely.

Once she's settled, he moves to get in with her.

[rhinemaid]

"I don't know if he and Huan would live together well," she sighs, letting Ivan arrange himself before she resettles against him like a vampiric arm-chair. It's nice, being in her own house with her own things and her own vampire, and she feels like a traitor for it. For being grateful for it. She wants their success in New York, but she doesn't really want to go back.

[deservesadaisy]

He presses a kiss to her shoulder. "It's moot now." He's sorry she had to come back this way, but he's too selfish to be sorry she's back.

[rhinemaid]

"I just...I don't know if Sonja's coming back." Maybe it's selfish to want her to; they'd spent so much of this past year focused on getting out of Baedal, she shouldn't be sitting here wishing for Sonja to get trapped again. She still has a life to live there, and responsibilities that are so much bigger than Ilde.

[deservesadaisy]

"She will or she won't," he says, quiet and simple. "If she'll come back for anyone, it will be you, I'm sure." Ivan doesn't know if that'd be good or bad, but it's something to deal with later. "I don't know if we'll figure out the whys any time soon, here."

[rhinemaid]

"Baedal keeps secrets." That's nothing new; she's been frustrated with it since she first arrived, ferreting out little pieces of information and hoarding them like something precious.

[deservesadaisy]

"So it does." He leaned back a bit, drawing her with him. "And people, as well, it seems."

[rhinemaid]

"Some people." Ilde, Sonja and Hilmi aren't the first to disappear; Ilde isn't the first to reappear. Many of those others, though, they were gone and they stayed gone.

Dean Winchester died.

[deservesadaisy]

He just holds her, at that. She's right, and he won't pretend she isn't.

Finally, though, he says, "I'm glad you came back." He says it like a secret.

[rhinemaid]

"So am I." It sounds more like something she's half-afraid of, the way she says it; something she might not have admitted if not for that timely opening. Is she allowed to be glad?

[deservesadaisy]

He kisses her neck, lightly. "That's nice to hear, under the circumstances."

[rhinemaid]

"I didn't want to never see you again." ...well, even death probably wasn't going to make her effusive in her sometimes-wary expressions of fondness in this accidental relationship. It's a step up from 'used to you', either way, and it's a little bit easier in the quiet room with steam rising and a hundred things that will still need her attention later but aren't quite anything she can think about now.

[deservesadaisy]

He presses his lips to her hair. "I wasn't ready to let you go." Which falsely suggests that he might ever be, except for the tone in which it's said.

[rhinemaid]

They really need to have that conversation, she thinks, vaguely; she doesn't have the energy right now to get into it, whether or not he's going to stay with her when she's ready to find a way to get pregnant. Not being ready to let go of her now maybe doesn't mean he's going to be interested in signing up for the life she wants to lead now her part in that siege is over--

A lot changed, the past few weeks. She needs to let herself catch up with it.

"If I could've warned you, I would have...I didn't know it was about to happen."

[deservesadaisy]

"I gathered. It wasn't your fault." Ivan knows better than most that people don't get a chance to warn you before they leave, more often than not.