Midsommer's Night Run

[cian_oneill]

It was almost as regular as clockwork, heading up to Searchlight on a Wednesday night for a few beers and a game or two. Cian went to the Golden Nugget, probably the most regular watering hole, for someone who didn't have regular places. Sometimes he went all the way to Vegas, but usually didn't bother. The noise of the big casinos usually hurt his ears, and the smell of fumes on the strip was something he could do without.

Like this Wednesday, when he just went up to the bar and ordered himself a beer, taking it over to a table and sitting down. After taking a long swig he leaned back in his chair, legs stretched out in front of him, as he continued to survey the other occupants of the place.

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[rhiannon_lee]

Rhiannon’s car hit a dip as it rattled into the parking lot of the Nugget. A rosary swayed from the rear view mirror and a mess of ink pens clattered into the far corner of the dash. She shifted into park and the little motor petered out. The trip back to town was a necessity because her final bill with the motel had to be settled… Haggled over was more like it, as the clerk, bane of her existence for the past month, invented charges for a cigarette burn that had been in the carpet since 1975.

Blistering argument over, she now needed food.

The slayer climbed out of her seat and the foam inside its ruptured upholstery emitted a sigh. She slammed the door with her hip. Loose gravel shifted under her boots as she fiddled with her key ring and made her way into the diner. She was recognized by a sleepy strawberry blonde who slouched behind the counter. “You want your usual?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” Rhiannon kept working at the key ring as she walked to her favorite table on autopilot. If his shoe hadn’t jutted into her field of vision, she might have sat down across from the man like they were old friends having a beer. She pulled up short. “Oh. Shit, sorry. Didn’t—yeah. ”

Rhiannon blinked and turned away with a puckered mouth.

[cian_oneill]

Cian pulled his feet in, the brunette looking vaguely familiar to him, but not enough to make him comment on it.

"'s OK. Y' welcome t' join me," he said lazily.

[rhiannon_lee]

His accent tickled her ears. She replayed the lilting syllables in her head.

“Oh. Umm…”

Rhiannon poked her cheek with her tongue and looked around. Though not antisocial, she wasn’t a social butterfly and the idea of sharing a meal with a total stranger was unusual. But each of the other booths had at least one occupant and she didn’t favor sitting at the counter with her back to the whole room. ‘It’s no different than striking up a conversation at a bar…’

The brunette turned to him. “Okay, sure. What the hell?” She dropped into the opposite seat and stashed her keys by the napkin dispenser. Beneath the table, her boots crossed at the ankle. A beer arrived and Rhiannon wasted no time gulping down the top third of it. She set the tall glass aside and wiped the condensation on her jeans. “Hi,” she said by way of greeting.

[cian_oneill]

"Hi," Cian replied, enjoying watching the woman settle into her chair. "I'm Cian, and I've a feeling I've seen you before. You from around here?" he asked, trying to place whether she was a guest out at the resort, or maybe a local, or worked in at the casinos in Vegas, or even just up at Boulder City.

[rhiannon_lee]

“God no,” she said with a grimace. Rhiannon fished a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from her hip pocket. She wouldn’t light one up at his table unless he was a smoker, too, but it made for more comfortable sitting. “I’m from Michigan. But I have been staying out here, so you’re probably right.” She took her turn studying the man to decide if he looked familiar, too. Maybe. Most times when she ate in the diner, Rhiannon sat in the corner with a sketchbook and a plate of fries, giving herself permission to lower her guard and ignore the room.

“I’m Rhiannon. And you sound like my dead grandmother. Ireland, yeah?” She shook a bangle down the length of a freckled forearm so that it wouldn’t clatter against the tabletop.

[rhiannon_lee]

Cian’s face was a dead giveaway, a grown man now resembling a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar but not the least bit sorry about it. Rhiannon pursed her lips in an effort not to grin, which failed miserably. “Ahh, not in a while,” she said. “I’m getting the lay of the land before the other kind.” Just when she thought her face muscles were under control, they buckled. She snorted and scratched her eyebrow, as bemused by her own reaction as anything.

More often than not, Rhiannon found herself in a dominant position in conversations because of heightened emotions or an excess of opinions on the primary subject matter than came up: demons. Here in the diner – guest at a man’s table – she found herself in the unfamiliar position of sitting in someone else’s turf, a person whose presence marked territory as easily as hers usually did.

Like an Alpha.

“You’re— ” She caught herself and began to manipulate her pack of Marlboros again. If she was going to say something here, it needed to be right. “There’s something unusual about you. I can’t put my finger on it, but you have this...” ‘Watchfulness. Grace. Pick a fucking word and say it, Rhiannon.’ But any word supplied by her brain fell short.

She reached across the table and pressed her fingers to the inside of his wrist. “You have a pulse, right?”

[cian_oneill]

Cian's glass was halfway to his mouth when her question finally made it out. It stopped in mid-air as his eyes crossed to meet hers. There was a laugh hidden behind the green.

"Last I looked I did," he replied, lowering his glass to the table, knowing what she was asking, and leaning forward.

For her to ask that he didn't doubt she knew something of his world, and that of the types that inhabit it. His body was something he took care of, always had, except for the year or two after the attack. Thanks to Annie and the others he'd learnt the power he now had, and how to harness it, how to control it and how to hide it from those who would want to make him into a lab specimen. It was a sign of trust for him to give her the opportunity to see for herself.

He held his wrist for her, feeling the cool touch of her fingers on his skin on the inside of his wrist, eyes still on hers. He'd been told by lovers in the past that he was always warm to the touch, even in the coldest of weather, and he'd figured they were right because most humans felt slightly cool to him. He waited, able to feel the pulse in his wrist himself at that point, eyes unblinking, still fixed on hers.

"What's the verdict?"

[rhiannon_lee]

Rhiannon pretended to scold him. “Hang on. It’s important to be thorough.”

What began as a rhetorical question became real as she clasped his wrist and counted the slow, healthy beats of his pulse. His temperature was elevated to at least one hundred degrees, Rhiannon guessed, and now that their skin was in contact, she knew that Cian was not solely human. The seconds ticked on as she gazed back at the Irishman.

She spoke in a softer voice. “What are you? Because I know what I feel.” And to show that she was willing to give as well as take, “I’ll tell you if you tell me.”

[cian_oneill]

"Show 'n tell, huh? Haven't played that in a while," he drawled softly, eyes now with an unmissable glint of gold flecked in the green. He let her continue her hold on his arm, their skin in contact and her pulse detectable through her thumb resting on the back of his wrist.

"Probably easier t' show th'n tell," he continued, voice almost a soft purr. "Though I'm a mite careful about an audience." He glanced down at her fingers and back up at her face. "I've shown y' good faith, so you go first."

[rhiannon_lee]

Rhiannon raised her eyebrows. “Mm. Glad to hear we’re a topic of conversation.” She picked up a fry, less out of hunger than occupying herself. “Why do you go to those places, Cian? What’s in it for you?” It was her way of asking if he went to pick fights or not. She liked demon hangouts. She wasn’t welcome in all of them, but when she was, Rhiannon experienced relief. It wasn’t any easy thing to walk in the regular world, knowing what she knew, hiding it, and lying about herself.

The jukebox flicked to Lionel Ritchie. Rhiannon reached into her jeans pocket for a handful of change. She separated three quarters from the mix.

[cian_oneill]

Once he'd learnt to control his shift Annie had taught him what he needed to know about the types of individuals he needed to watch out for, vampires being top of that list, and then proceeding down. And she had taught him how he could make the most Siofra, as they had come to call his cat. And he did.

"Don't like seeing good folk get hurt," he replied, sitting up and wondering whether to get another beer, his fingers turning the empty glass in the small damp patch it had left on the tabletop.

[rhiannon_lee]

Rhiannon tapped her quarters against the table. “Hang on a sec.” She got up and went to the machine. Even if she wasn’t there to hear her songs, she felt a civic duty to rescue the other patrons from whatever random tracks the jukebox kicked out. She had seen the selections before and knew exactly how much ABBA was on file. She fed the coins, pressed a few numbers, and returned to where Cian fiddled with his beer glass.

“You always fight in your animal form?” Rhiannon asked as she sat down. “I’m just wondering what I should look out for… assuming you don’t show me yourself.”

[cian_oneill]

"Depends. If they deserve it, yeah, if not," he shrugged the rest of the answer. He knew how to use his fists, and that had sufficed on more than one occasion. But when he'd found they were a little less human it had been Siofra who had carried out the justice.

"C'n show you if y' like, just so's you don' be making any mistakes about who's got your back," he added, a small arch of the eyebrow asking the question of whether she'd make that mistake.

[rhiannon_lee]

Rhiannon held her position and gazed up at the golden creature. “You’re beautiful,” she said. Perhaps ‘handsome’ would have been the better descriptor. The aesthetic appeal of musculature and smooth coat aside, she responded most to the animal’s fluidity of motion and stealth. Any good hunter possessed some feline traits, but in Cian’s case, he became one with them. The likelihood of seeing another cougar on a hunt was minuscule, but Rhiannon doubted she would mistake him for another anyway. She did not look at his eyes directly, as that might be considered a challenge.

After a moment, she sat on a low rock beneath Cian and waited.

[cian_oneill]

Siofra's chin lifted, eyelids lowering slightly as a slight shift on the breeze brought a new range of scents to the sensitive olfactory senses, reporting on the state of the nation surrounding the two. Detecting nothing that carried a warning the head lowered again, front legs relaxing as a large tongue was exposed and a yawn issued. It could have appeared as if the animal was requiring more air than had been taken in during the run, or simply a message of relaxation, or even more so a way of tasting the surrounding scents. Whichever it was, when it was completed, bared teeth again concealed, the front shoulders lowered and the body stretched out in the dark, the faint light of the partial moon tricking the eyes into thinking the form was that of a large cat, but the figure in fact shifting back into that of a naked human.

"So, y' c'n run then?"

[rhiannon_lee]

Rhiannon clasped her fingers behind her back. A mane of dark, glossy hair slipped over one shoulder as she tilted her head. "I can do a lot more than run." Her vision wasn't anything to sniff at, and she could see the bare expanse of Cian's neck and torso.
Good Lord.

"Sure hope you can find your pants in the dark. It would be a shame if you couldn't."

[cian_oneill]

Cian chuckled, completely confident in both his forms. As a young lad he'd sometimes been accused of being too proud of his body, but he'd figured as a young man if he didn't take care of it, who would, and it would be the only one he had.

Little did he know back then.

Now it was still as important to him, but for different reasons. And he had no misplaced coyness, leaving that for others who had whatever reason they had to behave that way. While he no longer flaunted it, he also didn't make a fuss.

He lightly tapped the side of his nose as he grinned in the faint light. "Tend t' be able to relocate 'em w'thout too much bother," he told her.

[cian_oneill]

When he thought about it later he decided it was definitely due to her being a Slayer, the sensations similar to when Michael had done similar things to him when teasing him unexpectedly. The difference this time is he expected the touch, just not the sensation.

And he felt himself shifting.

Knowing it was something that wasn't pleasant to try and stop, and seeing absolutely no reason to do so, given the company and circumstances, his eyes widened and body arched into the touch. His head lifted and the second pass of her fingers was the one that pushed him through and a few seconds later Siofra was laying there, a loud purr rumbling in the large chest. The large body rolled toward her, stopping as it pressed against her side, the head twisting around until it was facing her.

[rhiannon_lee]

Rhiannon felt the skin changing beneath her fingers as it sprouted sleek, coarse fur. She laughed quietly. “Wow.” The backs of her fingers eased along the cougar’s pliant neck. They dug more firmly into the coat when she scratched the cat’s back, keeping her movements rhythmic and slow. She wasn’t sure how much of Cian was present at those times and didn’t want to raise its hackles. “This is a first for me. You’re a spectacular beast, aren’t you?” The low purr vibrating her side and the creature’s warmth made her feel calm in a way she hadn’t in a long time. “Tell your human he’s spectacular, too.” Though she knew it had many drawbacks, she envied this transition, a secret one could carry into the open without others being the wiser.

[cian_oneill]

Siofra lay there, listening to the woman's voice and relishing in the scratching. It was very rare for this to happen, the secret having been kept hidden for a number of years, since he'd last found anyone he could trust enough to allow behind the curtain. The contact was something he hadn't realised he'd missed until now, her fingers digging into the coat and stroking away tension that had been hidden beneath the skin.

Back legs stretched, front followed as jaws separated into a wide yawn that was finished when a large paw rubbed across the whiskered cheek. The head, perhaps heavier than might have been expected, stretched back and thudded gently onto her knee as the scratching continued.

[rhiannon_lee]

“Which is easier for you, huh?” Rhiannon whispered without anticipating an answer. “To be Cian or the animal under the surface?” The question had relevance in her own life, in the struggle she experienced with her power and place in the world. Was it easier to be a slayer or a normal woman? To hold onto her moral compass or let it slip from her fingers? Which woman should be leashed? Her hands worked in the loose folds of flesh on either side of the cat’s neck. His deep, even breathing appealed to her and she had the oddest urge to lie down beside him. “Does it make you lonely?” Each question was a confession in its own right and it was easier to talk to this creature than a human being, not knowing what he comprehended or what he would recall.

Staying behind Siofra’s head, she bent and touched her nose to his fur.

[rhiannon_lee]

“Aha.” Rhiannon pointed at him briefly.

Then thought to herself, holy hell.

She cleared her throat. So much for the upper hand in conversation. What was the heat creeping up her throat? Certainly not embarrassment. She hadn’t been embarrassed by sex a day in her life. And as for witty retorts, her mind had gone blank. Fuck.

“Well. At least you’re right about that,” she said.

The back of the Golden Nugget became visible as a black shape outlined against the lights in its parking lot. She tucked her thumbs into the hip pockets of her jeans as they stepped onto the blacktop, still in shadow.

[cian_oneill]

Her scent from before, from when Siofra had rested on her knee, wafted through his senses and his nose twitched, detecting a shift, and it made him smile, their shoulders bumping as they walked onto the different surface. With a single step that was as smooth as all his others he spun and was standing in front of her.

[rhiannon_lee]

Deep in contemplation of her own mysterious brain workings, Rhiannon missed the motion in the darkness. She bumped into his chest. Her fingers clutched at his shirt, which wasn’t there. That was hot skin. “Shit. Sorry.” It was the second time she had uttered that phrase in one night. Upon realizing it, she laughed, an airy sound of bewilderment, because the proximity to him was not funny in the least. “I think you did that on purpose,” she said. Her fingers squeezed his upper arms.

Stop petting him.

[cian_oneill]

"There's very little I do that isn't on purpose," he replied, hand already on her shoulder and sliding around to cradle her neck as his mouth lowered to press against hers in a kiss that spoke of hunger and tasted of the wilds.