In the Blood [ON HOLD]

"Has Something Changed"

Remi held the letter, not seeing the words on the crisp white page as he listened to her slam things around in the kitchen. 

That's not my problem. None of this is fucking reasonable.

Her words echoed around in his brain, shocking him. She trusted him not to rework a deal? She trusted him to honor an agreement?

Not that he wouldn't honor an agreement. Trust in his business actually did have a place. It was hard to make money off people who thought he was going to stab them in the back.

It was just... strange, considering what she knew about him. Strange that she... trusted him... wasn't scared of him.

Why wasn't she scared of him?

Remi set the letter—Charlie's future—down carefully on the couch he'd had delivered this morning. He stood up slowly, pressing a hand to his side. The wound was tender still, but not as painful as the last time he'd been stabbed.

The water had been turned off and he slowly made his way to the kitchen, standing in the doorway for a moment, just watching her.

She was leaning against the counter, hands braced on the edge. Her head was slightly lowered, her shoulders tight. Whisps of her hair had escaped from her ponytail, tickling the skin of her neck. His fingers brushed against one another—nerves or anger or something else, he didn't know.

"Charlie," he rasped.

Her back straightened, her entire body drawing itself up stiffly. Slowly, cautiously, he walked forward, feeling a bit like he was trying to sneak up on a panther. It was up to her if he would walk away with his pride mauled or not.

"If it was just about our deal," she croaked, still not facing him, "I wouldn't be worried. I've made my peace with that. But I don't think things are as simple as that. Do you?"

Remi stayed quiet for a moment. What had changed from this morning? How had she gone from that cold, beautiful creature to this soft, vulnerable woman?

Everything in him rejected that. She was not soft. She was not vulnerable. She was a force to be reckoned with—one he wanted to challenge and test until she forced him to stop.

"There isn't a single thing about you that's simple."

A nearly soundless breath escaped her and her hands tightened on the edge of the sink. The knuckles he could see turned white. "What do you want from me?" she whispered, and he realized he still had no answer. "What will this cost me?"

He wanted nothing, and everything, from her.

"You mean more than being a doctor," he said carefully, unwilling to assume that she meant anything different. "More than what I've already asked."

"A doctor isn't the only thing I am to you," she said quietly, uncertainly.

The truth was poison to him. He dealt in lies and secrets, worked in shadows and humanity's most shameful of behaviors. The honesty in that sentence hit him like a bullet and he hated how easily she wielded it against him. Hated how she had forced him to embrace it on more than one occassion since they'd met.

He despised the unsure tremor in her voice. Before he realized what he was doing, he let his fingers skim down her arm to her elbow. She didn't resist as he turned her toward him.

Charlie's eyes were closed, dark lashes fanned across the sleepless shadows etched into her pale skin. She looked like a porcelain doll with her heart-shaped face and fine, straight nose. Her full, expressive lips. 

Remi traced those lips with the tip of his index finger, noting their color, their softness.

"What am I, Remi?" she asked, breath brushing sensitive skin.