A Plan With Many Flaws

who: brett and eris
where: gray's house
when: very very late
NSFW

When she'd gotten the flowers earlier in the evening, it had been surprising. What was more surprising was that they were addressed to 'Princess'. And there was an address, nothing more. So, she assumed it was Brett, at least, which made her feel slightly better for getting two unsigned notes in two days. especially since her last one had led her to meeting up with fucking Jakob. She might have cut out early, just gone right then and there, but she didn't. She was too smart to just drop everything before her set was finished. It'd raise all sorts of suspicion. Beyond that? She still did actually need her job, and she'd lost a good few days when the Echo had decided that printing her picture was a good plan.

So she'd waited. She'd finished out her set, said goodnight, got her cut and went upstairs. She bathed, changed, and then headed right back out again. Sure, she might have worn something a little more upscale than she otherwise would have. And it was possible she put makeup on and a little perfume. Just possibly. Though she was banned from wearing off the shoulder gowns for a while...at least until the mark he'd left on her shoulder healed. She almost opted to wear one anyhow, but she didn't know what the address was, so, she didn't.

When the cab dropped her off, she stood outside of the house for a long few moments. It looked dark and abandoned, but she knew it was familiar, too. And, after she circled round it once, she knew why. It was where she'd been before she'd gone to live with Brett. Gray's.

The memories she had of the place weren't exactly pleasant. Not by a long shot. Still, she approached when she figured no one was paying attention--though this time of night in a largely residential area, people were sleeping, or high and about to be sleeping. If they weren't doing that, they were up to their own shady dealings, and didn't have time to wonder what the hell she was up to. So, she slipped in the back, through a hole in the fence someone had put in. Then she looked around. It didn't take her long to discover the window they'd left from the first time was open. And, with a quick look along the rest of that side of the building, she noted it was the only way in. So, She carefully made her way inside, and then looked around in the dark. She didn't have anything like a lighter on her person, though made a mental note that she should start. Might come in handy, especially if she was going to be running around the city meeting random people due to cryptic notes sent to her. Though, that was why she had his gun on her.

She took a few steps into the place, not liking what she was remembering of her stay when Gray had been there. But Brett wouldn't have called her here for no reason, right? Unless it's to end you. a voice in the back of her mind put in. Which...she didn't like to think was the case, but she supposed was possible. He could have been compromised, too. Given an ultimatum...could be a lot of things, really. She didn't call out or anything, not even sure if he was there, or if there was something more sinister waiting for her. If there was...well. She wasn't giving herself away so bloody easily.

When he'd sent the flowers, he hadn't given her a time, or a day. Just the address. He would have preferred not to even give her that - he would have preferred to give her a note that had detailed a way of finding where he wanted her to come. Only, he knew her limitations. He figured she wouldn't remember the address of where she'd lived for those months. So, he'd risked it and sent her the address. that way, she could get here, even if it mean calling a cab. Not the best way to work, but you did what you could.

He hadn't expected her early on. He'd been telling himself not to expect her at all. That she'd be working, then it would be late, and that if she was going to come at all, it would be tomorrow, and then he'd probably be working. Maybe she'd leave him a note to show he'd missed her. Maybe he'd never know.

He'd told himself to go to bed, down in the basement, on that piece of shit damp mattress where he'd probably be too cold to sleep properly. Or, he could always go home. Like as not, Jackson wouldn't be watching at this hour. And hopefully the guy wouldn't tell anyone else. God, the angles would give him a headache. But still, he waited, sitting on the floor, underneath the boarded up picture window in the living room, his back against the wall. The boards were split, about half way up, sending a shaft of orange light into the room from the street light outside, casting him into shadowy relief as he half dozed, uncomfortably.

Eris walked through the empty building, just sort of looking around. It didn't appear anyone was there. Though it did look like someone'd taken time to clean it out. Things like 'nicky eats pussy' didn't get on the walls with crude depictions of genitalia without the place getting trashed as well. That, and there was all the broken windows, but she wasn't stepping on broken glass. She checked upstairs, heart thudding a little harder than usual as anxiety kicked up more than she would have liked. She saw the bathroom Brett had found her in, of course. Her old room. Gray's. Then she went back downstaris to check the rest of the rest of the rooms, which were pretty much as empty as those upstairs.

The basement door seemed like the only one that was properly shut, however. She hesitated, her fingertips on the doorknob. Did she check and then consider leaving a note? Or would he not be down there and she knew it, and he was just off someplace? And that was if it was really from him and not some ruse to lure her somewhere. If she were luring someone to their death, a good place to dispose of a corpse would be in the basement, where all the chopping up of limbs could be done without anyone bothering you. In the end she exhaled, turned the knob, and started to very carefully take the steps, though she slipped her shoes off, because already steep, rickety steps were not the best to walk on to begin with, and she wasn't pushing her luck by doing it in heels.

He'd caught the sounds of someone moving through the house as she'd hit what he thought was the bathroom. There was an old floorboard just outside and it creaked. Enough that by the time she found the door to the basement, he was aware he wasn't alone. He was refusing to admit that he'd hoped it was her, allowing that it might be only to the extent that that would be better than someone else as he made his way, tracking the sounds of movement.

He caught the figure as she started down to the basement and he fell in behind her as she stopped to remove her shoes. "Got the message then," he said, his voice low.

She startled, jumping a little bit and she reached out to grip the railing, which wasn't so well connected, and it thunked a little and she pitched forward just a touch. Not enough to truly lose her balance or anything, but it was jarring to the system. "Jesus christ." she hissed, looking back over her shoulder at him. "Really? You couldn't have said hello, or warned a little, or not scared the shit out of me?" she continued, voice also low, and she turned on him and swatted his chest. "Yes, I got your message. I was wondering if you'd been compromised, or I was walking into a fucking trap, thanks." she said, heart still triphammering in her chest. She didn't usually scare. She really didn't. And honestly, she could have faced down people with guns and axes and such much better than just that soft voice in the dark, right behind her when she hadn't expected it.

Brett took a step back and glared at her. "You were the one creeping through the house without me knowing who you were," he pointed out. "You could have been fucking anyone and I didn't know until just before I said something, so don't give me that bullshit. What else was I meant to do? With the fucking cops watching you? As it was I probably shouldn't have been that fucking blatant, so back down and don't give me that shit," he snapped - possibly making up for the fact that he'd had to send her flowers by being even more of an ass than usual.

"And I had to come here not knowing if there were people luring me somewhere just to take me out! Or if they had you, and you'd had to sell me out. Or what. I didn't even know where it was. Just a note, and after the one last night..." she started, still annoyed and her heart was still threading along, though it was starting to come down. "You had the advantage, you could have been anywhere, I was walking in blind. You at least should have known I was coming." she pointed out. There was even a tone of 'I win' in her voice, and she crossed her arms, giving him a glare. "If you're going to scare me to death next time don't wait until I'm on stairs. I could have fallen." And almost had, so yeah.

"What the fuck did you expect me to do!" Brett exclaimed. "Sign it? When Jackson's all fucking over you like a damn rash? Turn up? You're the one that said we shouldn't be seen together! So what the fuck was I meant to do - I did what I could to let you know it was me. And who was to say you were gonna show at all. You work late. You were probably gonna come by tomorrow, earliest. I didn't expect you." He didn't mention that he'd hoped that she would. Or that he was thrown she hadn't even mentioned the flowers he'd sent.

Eris arched a brow at him, listening to his tirade, though she looked unimpressed. "...sweetheart," she said slowly. "I didn't say anything about the note. That was fine. That worked well, even. It was good thinking...though I like lilies." she said. "I was talking about you being here, and I had no real idea what to expect, or even if you were here at all. You probably could have made that slightly less fucking terrifying for me." she stated. Then she paused. "Why wouldn't I come as soon as I could when you sent for me?" she asked. "Something could have been wrong."

"Why would anything be wrong," Brett shot back, ignoring the statement about lilies - like he'd really been concentrating or bothered about pleasing her with his choice of whatever went with the message. "Nothing was wrong - we just needed a place to meet. This is it. It's not my fault you chose to be terrified at that. Why to fuck would you be terrified anyhow? I gave you the address, you came."

Eris gave him a Look. "...why would anything be wrong? Do you really want me to answer that, or should I save us the hours it would take to list off everything that could possibly have gone wrong?" she asked. "And I didn't choose to be terrified, I just--look, should I leave? Since you're so pissed off I even showed in the first place, apparently?" she asked, crossing her arms over her chest as she shifted her weight to her good foot. Re-opening the cut on the bottom of the other early that morning made it tender. Especially with as much walking around on it she'd done afterwards.

Brett didn't say anything. He didn't actually want her to go. He'd not allowed himself to expect her, but he'd been hoping she'd show, and she was here now. Which did, of course, arose his ire because that set in motion a worry that maybe she'd just been waiting for some kind of a sign from him. But at least it was late enough that she'd waited for her job to be done. He would have been really thrown if she'd just got his message, dropped everything and come to him. Even though he'd been prepared for it, that would have meant her had some kind of standing in her life that he didn't imagine he did and didn't know how to handle. "...I talked to Jackson last night," he said, eventually, changing the subject entirely to one he could handle more easily.

Eris went with the change, moving to sit down on the step, because she didn't fancy standing around, and it wasn't like there was furniture. At least, none that she'd seen. Also, her foot still hurt and standing on one foot for an extended time on steps that had seen better days wasn't an activity she wanted to really go for the gold with. She did sigh, though, at the news. "What's he have to say?" she asked, looking back up at him. "He's still planning on watching me, you know. I asked."

"He wanted me to turn state's evidence. Got all gung ho about clearing my name, getting me my old job back." Brett snorted slightly, making clear what he thought about that one. "...And he wanted to be able to get ahold of me. Told me that he'd track me down if I didn't give him a go-to. So I gave him Ginger. I can't have a cop on my tail. Not even Jackson. Not right now. You know the shit I'd be in if anyone even thought I'd turned back..."

She nodded, knowing. She set her heels down, and crossed her legs, reaching down to rub at the bottom of her foot. Silent for a moment, she thought about what he'd said. "About the only way you could do it is if you were in protective custody, and we all know how trustworthy the cops can be. There's so many on the take..." she trailed off. "Not sure that would work out so well for you. And even if he thinks he's some kind of hero, he wouldn't be able to stand up to some serious doublecrosses." she said. "...I did something today, however, that might take some more heat off of you." she said, looking back at him again.

"What did you do?" Brett asked, that demanding edge to his tone. Anything else he could have said was forgotten in that question as he took a step forward, towering over her as she sat there.

Eris gazed up at him, sort of taking a private little moment to appreciate the view. Sure, she probably shouldn't, since he was likely going for imposing and all, what with the tone he was giving her, but Brett did happen to have a little something about him when he was angry. Even if he did look like he was a bit rough around the edges, where she'd actually put time into things before seeing him--which appeared to be a complete waste of time. "I sent an anonymous envelope to the Echo, with some information I had rattling around the back of my mind. It was a few things, mostly Syndicate focused, mainly the O'Malleys. Don't worry, it can't be traced back to you whatsoever." Which was what she figured his immediate problem was with the idea that she'd done something.

He met her gaze, not wavering for an instant. "Properly anonymous," he said - not really a question. Everyone thought she was dead. Well, almost everyone. It was hardly likely to be traced back to her.

"What do you think?" she said back, keeping her eyes on his. She leaned back a little, elbows on the step behind her since he seemed to be determined to hover, and he was a tall man in the first place. She already spent a lot of her time craning her neck to look up at him, this was even worse. So, she at least made it slightly more comfortable for herself. She leaned back, she let her hair fall back over her shoulders, and she didn't let her eyes waver from his.

He didn't answer her at first, not liking to be told what to do - and this was that. He relented, after a moment or two though. "I think if you were going to do anonymous, you'd make sure that that's what it was," he told her. "You don't take chances."

"Exactly. So, it was properly anonymous. But it should give them enough to light a few fires, get people paranoid, expose a few people who won't particularly like it. I'm sure there'll be some up and coming investigative reporter just dying to get their hands dirty with all of this." she told him. But there always was. Always. Everyone loved a big splash across the headline, everyone loved dirt. So she'd given it to them. "If your boy comes through, then they'll have a lot to think about all at once." And really, if she was doing things properly, there'd be one more step, but she needed to figure out how to get it done best. And how far she was willing to go with it. Really, she was willing to go as far as was required, but she needed to know first if the other two actions were working properly. Because if she did go for it all? She'd be done. Her part in this twisted little fairytale would be over and fast. It just wasn't going to be for nothing. She refused to go out until it was a done deal for him.

"Jackson'll do his part - and he isn't 'my boy'," Brett corrected. He wondered how much she knew about his past with Haas. Whether she knew they'd been friends, good friends. She didn't know much about him, that was for sure. He hadn't let her in. He didn't let anyone in. He was feeling the pressure of that more now than he had done for a very long time. He didn't like it - he preferred things when they were simple.

Eris smirked, just a tiny bit. There and gone, when he said that Jackson wasn't his boy. She figured that he'd correct her on that. "Well, for not being your boy, he certainly seems keen to help you." she said. "Maybe you should take it, Brett." she said, voice a little softer. "I can still do whatever I can, I still have a lot of secrets up here." she said, and she tapped her temple twice. "We're back to the original scenario, where you and I part ways, but it might be better for you. I mean...who do you really want fighting your corner? Someone who might actually be on the level, who wants to help you, who, from what you were saying, was putting options out there for you and everything, someone who could vouch for you with the authorities...or someone like me?" she asked, though it was rhetorical. "Doesn't seem to me like it should really be a question."

Brett looked at her for a moment, then stepped over her and headed down the stairs into the basement. "It's the authorities I don't trust in this scenario," he said, his voice floating up from the darkness. He'd decided Jackson was on the level. To a certain extent he trusted her. It was everyone else he didn't trust, and Jack couldn't protect either of them from that. Jack was a naive little shit at times, he wouldn't see the danger til it hit, and it would hit hard.

Her gaze followed him until he was into the blackness and she lost him. She sat up more properly, and didn't follow. It wasn't that she didn't want to follow--she did. But she didn't allow herself to do that. Didn't allow herself to thinking anything of it, or that was what she told herself. It was still burning at the back of her brain. Instead, she sat, gazing down at her hands for a few moments, reaching out to right the delicate bracelet she had on her right wrist. "Do you trust him?" she asked, after almost a full minute of silence.

The response wasn't immediate - and he didn't come back to the stairs to speak. "Mostly." Again, the disembodied voice floated out of the darkness and he wondered if she'd join him, or stay there. He refused to allow himself to consider whether it mattered. "I trust him if he doesn't do anything fucking stupid. I don't know if I trust him not to do anything fucking stupid."

You don't trust me. she thought, but didn't share. Again, she didn't speak immediately, turning the bracelet around her wrist, watching the dim light from the open door behind her flash off of the fake silver now and then. "If he's giving you an out, then you should take it. It'd be safer that way than anything else, and with what's already set in motion, you could still come out on the other side without problems." she said. And I can make some more noise. Louder noise. I'll be hunted down for it, but if it worked... Part of her wondered when she'd started pulling punches with him. Idiot. she called herself vehemently. One night of breaking the tension and she was getting senti-fucking-mental. Perfect. She'd even dressed up for him. Even if he hadn't so much as noticed. A fairly consuming streak of anger at herself flared up, and she almost stood and walked out. Almost.

"He's giving me an out, but that doesn't mean to say it's one that'll work," Brett told her, after a moment or two. He finally emerged from the darkness, standing at the bottom of the stairs, just visible in the shadows. "He offered me my old job back. Like I could just walk back in and everything else would be forgotten. Like that would be anything that would ever be possible. He's living in another world, Princess - that makes him dangerous. That's not something that solves problems."

She gazed down at him when she saw the movement, fingertips stilling on her wrist. "He believe in happy endings?" she asked, tone light. Quiet. Then she sounded a little more normal, forcing herself to. "Maybe he's in a dream world. And maybe that makes him dangerous, but it could make him dangerous to them, too." she said. "There's nothing quite like someone who believes in what they're doing." she told him, and that normal tone she'd been going for faded again towards the end of her statement. She'd seen it enough times in her life. They were rare. Shining little gems in a sea of coal, but they happened. "He strikes me as a believer. And if he believes in you?" she shook her head. "Might be no stopping him. All he'd need is direction. A little guidance." Maybe. Or, he could crash and burn everything because he was a believer who was blind to everything that didn't fit into his dream world. It was a toss up, really. But she believed if Brett was there to give that direction-push, it might go along alright. Especially if she was off on her own little destructive mission.

"All he'd need is direction, a little guidance and he'd go right off shooting his mouth off to the wrong people and he'd end up just where we are. As good as fucking dead. And no help to anyone." He wouldn't ruin someone else's life just to save his own. Especially not Jackson's - the man had more important things to do. Like carrying the torch. He wouldn't bring the man down, and he wouldn't let him do it to himself. "Haas sees the world like he wants it to be - which makes him really fucking stupid at times. Reality's not the way he sees it. ...Especially not now," Brett added, fading back into the darkness, his voice dropping once more at the end.

"Not if he had direction from you." she said, watching him go again and wishing he'd come back. Or maybe that she'd let herself go down there. But still, she didn't. Even if her gaze tracked where he would have gone, before she reminded herself that was stupid, and she went back to playing with her bracelet. The catch broke, though, and she sighed, letting it fall down underneath the steps. Cheap thing. "You talk like you know him well. I get the impression you do." she said. And she left it there, because she knew if she outright asked him to tell her about their relationship, he'd probably just snap at her. So she made a statement, and left it hang instead.

He leaned against the wall, in the darkness. "We worked together, once. Then, when we didn't, we drank together. It was a long time ago," he told her, cutting short his beginnings of an explanation. He didn't want to get into it. Things were easier before, when he couldn't even begin to trust people, he didn't have to think about what he should say - just say nothing, alienate them, chase them off. Simple, easy. Now things were getting complicated.

Eris was surprised she even got that much. But, it meant more to her than someone else, anyhow. If he was telling her that much, she could extrapolate that out a bit. She could assume that if they went drinking together, then they'd been friends. Especially if he was even giving the guy the time of day now. And friends meant something to Brett Trent. He didn't have a lot of time for people, but if he did... Unless it came to her, anyhow. "Do you think he's going to get himself killed doing all of this?" she asked, tone light. Quiet. His answer was going to play into her own game plans.

Brett snorted and shook his head. "I think he could get all of us killed," he said, honestly. It all depended on what he dd. And the big problem with Jackson, Brett knew, was that he could be led around by his conscience. His conscience and his overwhelming belief that good would win out and the the Right Thing To Do would always be the right thing to do. Brett had believed that, once. He didn't believe it any more. The world didn't work that way - he'd just had to learn that lesson the really fucking hard way.

"I know he could. But I asked if you think he's going to get himself killed." she said, ticking her gaze to where she'd heard him. She stood, and walked down a few stairs, towards the dark, but she didn't fully enter it, she didn't leave the staircase. Quiet, she didn't elaborate, either. It was a specific question, she wanted his assessment. It was still going to play in, and she didn't want to have to try and guess what he thought.

Brett looked towards the staircase as he heard her move. He could see the outline of her calves the light from above spilled down the steps and lit her from behind. The length of her legs, disappearing under the dress she wore, hinting at the red he knew it was coloured, though from here, it looked more black than anything - everything looked black in the darkness. She had a nice outline though, she always did. Damn her. "I think if he's lucky, he'll get himself through it. If he's not, he won't. I don't know what he's up against. I don't know who he'll meet. I'm hoping he's got enough brains to keep my name out of it, but even there... I don't know." In Brett's opinion, if Jackson brought his name into play, his chances of survival would go down like a fucking stone.

It was colder down there. She could feel it, the temperature difference, just in the few stairs she'd descended. And it wasn't warm in the house to begin with. Still, though, it was there, like an oppressive feeling. Like that wall of black that he'd escaped into. Or, likely it wasn't that. More like he'd put himself there, it wasn't like he was running or anything. He'd resent the implication. "Do you want to cut his involvement?" she asked, voice light. "Let him go with what he's got, but not give him anything else?" It would take replotting what was going to get done, but she'd figure something out. Plus there were other options. Sure, they were likely fatal options for her, but that didn't so much matter to her. The idea of leaving Brett with a friend out there was a concept that she wanted to maintain. So, if the little straight as an arrow dumbass couldn't be trusted to keep himself alive, then...plans changed.

"He's got your number," Brett pointed out, watching her from the darkness, not making any moves to go to her. Somehow, it was better here, right now. And she was a good one to watch, easy on the eyes. "He's not going to be cut that easily. He's got the smell of blood. He has your information, and now he knows I'm connected. Nothing could make him drop this one, no matter what."

"I know he's got me tagged." she said. Because she was well bloody aware of that. More aware than she'd like to be. "And I know we've already set him on the path. But he doesn't have to be given anything more." she said. "I could...find a way to step things up in other ways, it could make them less likely to think it'd be easier to take out a cop than it would be to find out who's really throwing a wrench into their works. They're already going to be wondering by tomorrow, once the paper's out. If you really think he's just going to get himself killed, and you aren't going to go with him and guide him through it...then there'll need to be a bigger target dangled in front of them." she said, stepping one more step down. She could feel little goosebumps rise up on her skin. Closer to the darkness, the cold...closer to him, even if she was telling herself not to go there. If she tried to find him in there, would he move? Was he there because he didn't want her near in the first place?

He straightened as he listened to her words coming up off the wall, frowning as he took a couple of steps - all it actually took to be right there before her. "No," he told her, cutting that line off right there and then, without any argument. "Stop there, right now. Fucking - no." He was sick of her and her elaborate methods of suicide, which is what he assumed all of this bullshit always was. As if she'd really died that night he'd saved her and everything else was just her waiting to catch up. He didn't believe that, and he wasn't going to let her do it.

She was a little surprised to see him, after he's spent so much time in the shadows. And for him to be as close as he was. She was more on par with his height though, actually having to look down slightly. "I know you don't want to?" she started, watching his eyes. "But you may actually have to make a choice here, at some point." she told him. "Things are very. Simple. Either we keep feeding him information so we can keep up that angle, or we don't. Either he can handle things, or he can't. Either you're willing to lead him through the darkness, or you aren't. Either he's left there to dangle, or something gets done to protect him." Her tone was light. Soft, even. She didn't let her gaze wander from his. "I know you don't like it. But I can't change the rules here. And if people step wrong, then it's going to end badly. For everyone." She almost reached out for him, almost reached out to trace her fingers along the dragon, or where she knew it was. But she stopped herself. All that did happen was her hand twitched a little.

"There's always. Another way," Brett ground out at her. She was making it sound like he'd have to choose, between them. She was talking bullshit, she wasn't thinking enough. There were ways through this, but she just couldn't see it. Hell, he didn't know what they were, but he refused to just roll over like she seemed more than willing to. He didn't believe in the sacrifices she seemed sure were necessary. He'd survived this much, to suddenly give in now was pathetic. He wouldn't do it. He half turned away from her. "Anyway, you talk about me leading him? He'd be more screwed if I did, than if I just left well alone."

She watched him, and this time, she didn't hesitate before she spoke. "I don't believe that." she said. "You know both sides of the game, sweetheart. You know the ins and outs of the mafia, you know how things work on the street. You know what there is to know about being a good cop, too. You know how that works and what does and doesn't fly. You know him, or I'm willing to bet you do. Seems to me you'd be in the best position to do just that."

He looked back at her, over his shoulder. "You don't know shit, sweetheart," he told her, the edge back in his voice. "You make it sound just as fucking simple as he does and neither of you knows shit." He took a step back towards the dark, looking away from her again. They'd sold him out. Someone, somewhere, some vague and unknowable 'them'. And they were still out there. Somewhere. And Brett imagined they were just waiting to finish the job. He'd always seen it that way. That if he played ball, played the part he'd been pushed into, he'd be safe. But he held no illusions. Whoever had wanted him out of the way, wouldn't be giving him a way back. And trying to get out, could be fatal from any number of sides. And the side he trusted the least was the one with the badge.

"You just don't want me to be right." Eris said. "If anyone's a little delusional here, it's you." she said, even if her voice didn't hold an edge. "You want there to be another way because you don't like the idea of people getting hurt on this or killed, because it's all about you. And that would kill you a little bit." she said, eyes still on him and she took another step down, to make up for the step he'd taken away. "I'm just being realistic. I know how this ends. You ever play chess?" she asked, though it was rhetorical. "No one wins with all their pieces still on the board. We just don't happen to have many to start with. You don't want to sacrifice him. I'd prefer it not to go that way either, but he's gotten himself in quite a bad situation, hasn't he. He refuses to leave me be, which we know won't end well. And if his new crusade is you? Then he's in even deeper and probably doesn't even realize it." She stopped there for a moment, and then she did finally reach out, and she just brushed her fingertips lightly down the back of his shoulder, before she let her arm drop back to her side. "I know what I'm doing."

He heard her, but he didn't believe her - he refused to fucking believe her. She was good, he'd give her that, she was fucking good - saying things in that way, that way that just suggested merely on tone alone that she was right and you were fucking stupid, that meant that you were meant not to question any of it. He was really fucking sure she'd got through a whole lot of her life on that tone alone, but he wasn't buying it, not for a moment. He turned back to her, stepping in to her, grasping her by the back of the neck - not hard, definitely not enough to hurt, but enough to keep her there, making sure that she was looking at him. "How much of this is you just wanting it to be over, Eris?" he asked her, his tone dark. "Because you seem pretty determined that this is gonna end up with you bloody, no matter what. Should I just have left you there? Is that it? Have you just had enough of it now? Is that what this is? You say you know what you're doing. What I think you're doing is a fucking elaborate suicide."

She drew in a sharp little breath when he grabbed her. She didn't try to stop him though, and she didn't try to get out of his grip. If she wanted out, she'd have to fight--she wasn't actually willing to do that to him. So, she didn't. And, as usual, she flinched a little when he called her Eris. She truly hated that. Every fucking time, and he knew it. He was certainly pulling out the stops on making a point. Her eyes were on his, because that's where he wanted them to be, and so she didn't deny him that either. "Just because that might be the end result doesn't mean that's the point." she said to him, tone light. "It wouldn't be a means to an end, it just happens to be the end for me, regardless." she said. "I would rather go out on my terms." she told him, and she swallowed, ticking her gaze away for a heartbeat before she returned it to his.

"You saved my life but you can't fix it. It's broken. There is nowhere for me to go. I only have so long where I'm at before I can't do that anymore, and that's even if Jackson doesn't fuck it up for me and get me killed first." she said. "Because that's more than possible. Anyone in that joint starts thinking I'm a rat? Well, what's a dead singer to them? Not a goddamn thing, that's what. It'd be easy for them. That's just how it works, and you know that." she said, more emotion creeping into her tone the longer she spoke. "You have a rat problem, you take care of the rat, and why take care of it on a temporary basis? It's not like I've got anything they could extort from me. Not unless they found out who I was, and if they did that? I get handed over to the highest bidder. And that's if the big boys don't just get wind and take them out and grab me while they're cleaning house." she said. "If he doesn't fuck it up for me, then fine, I've got a little longer. But I can't hide forever. I know that. And I'm not capable of..." she really hated admitting what she couldn't do now, but it played in. God, did it play in. "Anything?" she suggested, and her expression broke for just a second before she schooled it again. She took a second, a breath, and started again and she managed to get her tone a little more under control too--though not fully. "So I know that this ends bloody for me no matter what. Even if I just quietly tried to live my life, the grand fucking joke that it is, I'd get found. Eventually. I don't especially want to live with that over my head. I don't want to wait, and wonder if every time I leave my place, if someone isn't going to recognize me." And she'd even had to be more reckless with that lately, because she'd had things she needed to do. "Someone already knows and I don't even know who." she added. That stupid fucking note. Someone knew. It was some big unknown, and that clinched things for her all the more. "I know what I'm doing." she repeated, stressing it. And then she clarified what she'd meant the first time. "I'm aware. I know the consequences, I know the stakes. I know what it's all worth to me." She was quiet for a moment. "You saved my life. I'd like to return the favor, and I've got enough in this broken head of mine to do it." She watched his eyes. "I just want to be sure it all works. Because I don't want it to be for nothing, even if it is on my terms. Not much in my life has ever meant something to me. This does." she searched his eyes. "I just know how this goes. I know where it ends, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. It's not suicide, it's the logical conclusion. And since it is...it's on the board for me. It's a play I can make. I'd rather play it out my way, instead of leaving that to them."

He listened to her whole speech, following every word, letting her get that out there. There were a few things that she said that he filed away, things he wanted to know about but that weren't directly the point at the moment. He wouldn't allow her to divert him from the point, but he'd come back to them later. "You think it's worth it? Well, I don't. I didn't save your life to get a fucking favour returned. And I didn't save it just so you could fucking throw it away on some kind of a play. You say you know what you're doing, well find. another. way. Or I swear that I'll make sure that whatever you're doing? Doesn't work." And yes, he would fuck himself over for the rest of his life to follow through on that promise if he had to. He was beginning to realise something and whilst he couldn't quite grasp what it really was yet, it was there, and it was linked to her and he was sure that if she went and threw herself away like that, whatever it was would be gone forever. He knew it wasn't love or any emotional bullshit like that - it was something about life, about his life.

She was quiet for a moment, still watching his eyes. "Just because you saved my life doesn't mean you get to run it, even if you do have some idea in your head about what you did or did not save it 'for'. I keep telling you--I'm not your puppy. I get to do with my life what I want to do with it." she said, tone light. Calm. "And even if I did, you're ignoring everything else I said. About how eventually that's the end game for me anyways. You can't change that. I can't change that. I'm sorry it bothers you. But that's just the way it is."

He let her go then and stalked off, half way across the room. "Fine. Go - live your fucking life. Do whatever the hell you want, you're going to anyway," he snapped, dismissively. He didn't know why he even bothered - she was so fucking certain that this was going to end badly that she wouldn't even entertain other options, and any time he tried that, she decided that he thought she was a fucking pet. Well screw her, she could do whatever the fuck she wanted and he'd just carry on with... He didn't know what. Fucking stubborn fucking woman. There was a long pause before he started speaking again. He hadn't planned it - he'd planned on letting her walk away, walk out of his life and leave him the hell alone. She had it all so fucking planned out, well then she could just go off and fucking do it. But then he was speaking again. "You just can't even entertain the possibility, just the possibility that there could be another way through this, can you?" he asked, possibly a rhetorical question.

She'd turned, and she'd been going to leave. Not really because she wanted to, but because he'd definitely dismissed her. And there was a part of her that was saying that it was probably the best thing for him. If it meant he could and would go about his business, and she'd have the freedom to do what she was going to do, it'd be easier. And then he was talking again, and she looked back over her shoulder, towards where his voice had come from. "I'm good at seeing angles. It's what I've done my entire life. I don't see another one. Or, at least, I don't see another one for me." she answered, being honest. She also shivered a little bit, because the cold was seeping into her bones. "You, I can see angles for. You've got options, and I know the real thing holding you back is you're stuck where you are, and even if you've been gathering information for whatever reason, you haven't acted on it. Who knows if you ever would have. But it's in motion now. You've got options. Hell, with the boyscout on your side, you've got even more options. All you have to do is ride out the storm as well as possible, keep your head down and when the dust settles...you should be able to do what you want. Whatever that is." she continued, knowing it wasn't what his little cop friend thought it should be, but still. That wasn't the point. He'd have choices, which was what she'd wanted for him in the first place. "It's different for me. I keep telling you."

"I don't know that it is," Brett responded, after a moment or two, his voice low, almost thoughtful. There was another long pause before he continued. "They set me up, Princess. Three years ago. They set me up. I don't know if I was meant to die for it, or go down for it, or if what they intended was exactly what happened. But I doubt I'm ever meant to actually be able to walk away. Even if it's gone too far now for me ever to be able to go back." If he actually managed to accomplish what he'd set out to do when he went undercover, there was a really good chance that someone would come for him just for that. Yeah, he'd been able to see the really dark places this could go, the ways it could all go wrong.

That had her turning around, frowning and looking over into the dark where she knew he was, but she didn't know how far away. "You were set up." she repeated, then she exhaled, and crossed her arms over her stomach, mind buzzing with a lot of other things. Because that information changed things. It changed all the angles, added a new set of obstacles in the proceedings. She knew that he'd never go back to the force even if he'd be allowed to, and she knew there were shady cops and they couldn't be trusted, what she hadn't known was he'd been specifically targeted. And that made a whole world of difference. "I'm assuming you don't know who did it." she said, even if she hoped he did. If he did, that would be a much easier fix.

Brett shook his head. "Not a fucking clue," he agreed. Because he honestly had no idea. For all he knew, it could have been one person, but he figured it was more likely to be more than that. "All I know is that people died for it and a lot of times, I think I was meant to as well." That would have been neater, after all.

She was quiet again, mind ticking over things, recalculating everything. This very much changed things. And, it made her wish that she hadn't gone to Jakob. "I wish I would have known that." she said quietly. Drawing in a deep breath, she let it out slowly, reaching up to tug her fingers through her hair. "What was going on when you were set up?" she asked.

Brett had never actually told anyone what had happened. Not a soul. he'd kept everything firmly to himself and whilst he remembered what happened, putting it into words for someone else would be another thing. But he was committed now - he'd started, he needed to follow through. "Captain Hardy - the guy I was accused of killing. He calls me into his office one day, puts an offer to me. We were getting nowhere against the mob in the city and they were looking for a volunteer. Someone to go in, undercover. He told me my name had come up as a straight cop. I had a clean sheet, never put a foot wrong and I was their first choice, top of the list. I said I'd do it.

"Course, that just brought up the next problem, or so he put it to me. That everyone knew that I was honest, so it wasn't like people were gonna easily buy it, me going over. So, the plan was that I'd be seen to 'crack', and to make sure that there were no leaks, only three guys knew. Two of them are dead now, the other... Was in on it. Maybe, I dunno."

"Anyway, it started off as planned - the backstory was easy. My career... I never got very far. I wasn't like Jackson - he always got the promotions. I was past thirty and still a sergeant. So, I was gonna be the bitter cop that couldn't stand it any more. The one who wanted something more from life. I stole evidence from the lock up one night, along with a large pile of dirty cash - and I took it to the O'Malleys. And they were duly grateful - I was publicly fired from the force, and I started doing jobs for the O'Malleys. Low level stuff. They didn't trust me, of course. And I played my part, making sure I didn't put a foot wrong, making sure that I did whatever they wanted me to do, trying to get in there." Brett paused, taking a moment or two, before pushing on with his story. "Three months I stuck it out for and I'd say they were the longest three months of my life expect for the fact I've lived this shit for three years now and this is my life," he spat, bitterly. "I managed to get myself in on a deal - something that sounded big, something I thought would be my ticket out of there. I didn't know how badly things had already gone then. I didn't know that the 'meeting' was itself a set up. Maybe a set up - again, I really don't know. I'd heard that it was a meeting with a high level police informant to the Syndicate. I still don't know whether he was, or whether they'd organised for me to hear that. I still don't know whether I was set up by the cops, by the O'Malleys, by the Syndicate, or by all of them.

"The 'informant' was Hardy. The captain that had started all of this. I'd been running late for the thing - I'd been waylaid, and when I got there... Well, it was just in time to catch the end of an argument and to see Hardy and the other O'Malley guy there draw on each other. Just in time to see Hardy die. It was that night I tried to get out. And it was that night that I found out that of the two other guys who I'd been told by Hardy knew what I was doing, one of them had died two days after I'd gone under, and the other denied all knowledge of it. Hell, maybe he was telling the truth, maybe he didn't. I only ever had Hardy's say so that those other two knew in the first place. Anyway, the next day I was arrested for Hardy's murder and the O'Malley's sent me their lawyer. The rest is what it is."

Eris listened. She listened, taking it all in, and hoped she remembered the details later. Damn she hoped she remembered the details. It was a lot to take in, but everything he said kept firing away in her mind, making everything more and more complicated. One thing was for sure, things were in fact, now more complicated than she'd initially thought. It wasn't going to be an easy job. Fuck.

The other thing she was taking in was just how much everything about him made sense. How it all played in, added up, and all the pieces of him that didn't, made sense now. She had a crystal clear picture of the man now, without all those annoying, niggling catch-points that had always bothered her so much. It all added up. It just didn't add up particularly well. When she spoke it was after a few long minutes. "...what waylaid you?" she asked. "You said you were late. What held you up?"

"Joey O'Malley held me up. I'd been working for him all day - stupid shit, errand boy shit. And he wanted some more beers. Bullshit job, like he couldn't have fucking gone himself. But he was like that to me all the fucking time back then. Liked giving the ex-cop bullshit jobs to do, just to remind me he fucking could. The guy's a moron - always has been, always will be. Anyway, he made me go get him some, particular brand, y'know. And the first store was out, so I'd had to drive across town." Fucking pathetic - and a stupid fucking thing to delay him, to mean that he didn't have answers to what ruined his life.

Nodding, she took that in. "It could have been on purpose." she told him, since his tone suggested that he hadn't considered the possibility. That he considered it happenstance, when it may not have been. "You get 'delayed', show up just in time for things to go south, they get to tell you what happened, their version, whatever they want. In this case, it fucks you over and you're really in their pocket." she continued. "It could have just been a tactic." One that was subtle, but effective, in the right circumstances. She'd used it before in her day. Not with things of that nature, but if you wanted something witnessed, or you wanted to sell someone out but in a soft, 'not my fault' sort of manner, you set things up like that.

"Could have been," Brett agreed. "Except if the first store had been in stock, I wouldn't have been late." Not that that meant it was impossible, it could still have been a set up. That was Brett's issue, really - there were so many things that could have been a set up, pointing fingers at so many different people, he didn't know what to believe. "But there's still the fact that there's no record of my job, of what I was actually doing." Not that he knew that for sure, of course. He hadn't exactly gone to the station and asked anyone. The cops that had dragged him in for Hardy's murder hadn't been the friendliest of types, but you got that when someone was accused of a cop killing. A cop killing on top of evidence theft and going to work for one of the biggest gangs in town. To say they'd closed ranks against him would be putting it mildly. They'd been ready to hang him there and then and everyone in that room had known it. Brett had already had a bruise or several by the time the lawyer got there, and that bastard hadn't exactly helped. Oh, sure, he got Brett out of there in no time at all, but he'd done it by citing lack of evidence and legal technicalities. He hadn't been interested in making Brett look at all innocent. Or in giving him an opportunity to say anything. But if there'd been records, Jackson would have found them. After what the guy had said, by now, surely he'd know. But Jack had believed the story, even if he didn't believe the story. "There's no way that something like this could be pulled off without someone on the inside. At least someone on the inside."

"If it was a set up, all he'd have to do was send someone before you, to buy them out then ask for what he knew wasn't there." she said. "It wouldn't be hard. If you're setting something up, you need the variables covered. That's all I'm saying. And a lot of times it never has to involve anything but misdirection." She was quiet again, agreeing with him, really. "No record...that most definitely means that there's someone on the inside. At least one, probably more. Even if yours was a case where few people knew, that had to exist somewhere. Paperwork, something, because after all, pulling you back in wouldn't have been easy if all anyone had to go on was 'well, he was undercover, because I say so'." she took another step down and was finally off of the staircase, feet feeling the freezing cold of the floor. "I need to think about this." she told him.

"Not so simple now, huh," Brett agreed, his tone bitter and edged with confrontation. She'd thought she had it all organised, all planned out. She thought she could see all the fucking angles and she could - he'd just shown she couldn't. There was a certain amount of satisfaction in that.

"No, it isn't." she answered though her tone was light, ignoring his tone. And then it was her turn to walk into the dark, though it wasn't towards him. She exhaled, and closed her eyes for a moment, just...thinking things through, or trying to. There were so many new dimensions that put on things. Stop points, unknowns, all things that threw everything else off. Or, they could. They had the potential to. If Brett had been a little less tight lipped about what had gone down with him, she wouldn't have gone to Jakob. And now she had, and someone out there knew, and...this was a whole lot of not good.

He let the silence linger with that. He'd said his piece, she'd shown her the holes in her argument, shown her that reality wasn't what she thought it was. And he'd exposed himself doing it. He wasn't just going to keep filling in the silences with more damn information, that was for sure.

She walked until she found a wall, and there she leaned against it. The silence continued for a good long while as she thought about everything. This was going to take longer to come up with angles that would work now. She didn't think it was impossible, but it was going to take longer. Unless he disappeared. Sure, they'd discussed it before, and he hadn't been keen on the idea, but maybe it was a good time to bring it up again. "Brett, I think you should leave." she said. "I think you should get out of the city, go anywhere else, change your name and disappear."

"Not happening," Brett told her, like he'd told her before. "Firstly, I don't have those kind of resources. I'm kinda well out of money right now." After all, he'd given most all of his savings to Gray to keep her, something he knew they both knew, though it had never actually been said aloud. She was a smart girl though, he knew she'd worked it out. "And secondly, if I run? They'll be on my trail. And I won't live the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. The Syndicate's got one hell of a reach and if I make a break, I'd prefer to be on home turf to do it. At least then I know where I stand."

"I could help you with money." she said. She had kept her pay from her job, the only thing she'd really spent money on was cab fare and some clothes. "And you could leave when you initially planned, when everyone's too busy looking elsewhere to worry about you." she didn't think he'd accept her help with funds, but she had to put it out there as a possibility. Plus, the argument in her eyes didn't stand with the syndicate. Because the whole point of what they were trying to accomplish was to take people down, and they wouldn't give a damn about him anymore. No, her issue wasn't them at all anymore. Her issue was who'd fucked him over and how much it meant to them.

"I don't want your damn money," Brett shot back at her. She was going to need it, damnit. Because she had a fucking life to lead, no matter how hard she was trying to throw that away. "I'm not gonna run, Princess. I've lived through this much, I'm not gonna up and run now." Anyway, he had no idea where he'd go, or what he'd do. He'd lived his entire life in Eidolon, he knew nothing about the outside world, the idea of starting again, somewhere else? He wasn't sure that he'd be able to do it - but he'd never admit that to her.

"You'll need it more than I do." she said. And that was honest. The end game for herself was still the same, it just happened to be postponed for a while. "Besides, I have a problem." she said. "...I didn't know you'd been sold out by your own. I...have someone working on some things. I wouldn't have gone there if I'd known, but...now it's an issue." And she flat out didn't know what to do about it. Which was greatly bothering her.

Brett stopped and turned to her. "...What?" he asked, his voice low, almost dangerous. What the fuck had the bitch been up to? What the fuck had she been doing that he didn't know about? Fuck, she really was a fucking loose cannon, wasn't she? As if he didn't have enough problems with Jackson. And here was he, starting to fucking trust her - what had the bitch gone and done now?

"I wanted another angle to get you out." she said, hearing that tone and part of her almost wondered if she'd make it out of the basement. She knew that was old thinking, experience in her life, and not with him specifically that was talking, but it was there. "I wanted to be sure that you didn't wind up with problems I couldn't forsee, and I wanted you out clean. Because just getting you out wouldn't be enough if two seconds later you just had different problems to deal with. I want you to be able to walk away. Really walk away." she explained, not that she thought it would do any good. Brett was like that. He heard what he wanted, he decided what he wanted. Like he never listened to why she'd left his apartment. She figured this would be like that. Still, she said it anyhow. "So I contacted someone I used to know. He was on the force. Higher up the food chain now. I set him on task to help, didn't tell him why or what my stake in it was."

"Who?" Brett asked. He wanted to know who it was. Who it was that she'd seen fit to give a connection between her name and his. Who it was that now had that information. Because he might not know who set him up in the first place, but he did have the names of at least some of the cops that were working for the O'Malleys and if it was any of them, well, he was surprised he was still breathing. Fuck. Surely she knew, surely she fucking knew that the force couldn't be trusted.

"Jakob Hollis." she answered. "I knew him from way back. And I know he doesn't back down from a challenge." she told him. "I offered up information if he did a good deed, but it would be a difficult one for him." she continued. "He agreed, but I still don't have the files I was meant to have. And someone knows. I don't know who, but someone does." Falling silent again for a moment, she looked off into the blackness. "Therefore...as I said. I have a problem."

Hollis. The only good thing about that name was it wasn't on his list of cops definitely working for the O'Malleys. Still, as Jackson had said, he was a slimy son of a bitch. Which probably explained why he would be willing to work with Eris. "What files?" Brett asked her, because that caught his attention. She'd said that she wanted to get him out clean, and now she was after files. "Files on me," he summarised. "You were after files on me, and you didn't see fit to tell me about this?" No, of course she didn't, because she just did whatever the fucking hell she thought best and screw everyone else. She always fucking knew best, didn't she? Now who was treat who like a fucking pet, leading their life in whatever direction.

She didn't correct him on the files thing because he was right. "No. I didn't see fit to tell you this. All you would have done was go up one side of me and down the other. Again. Besides, I wasn't even sure I'd see you again when I went. And you know, sweetheart, you don't tell me things. Not really. You've told me more tonight than you ever have previously. Most of what I know about you is what I can infer, and when you deem it necessary to let me in on fragments. So why would I tell you? It's pretty clear you don't want me to know. But if I was actually going to help you, and do it right, then I was going to need more than what I could find in the papers on you. I didn't have any other way."

"And after everything you said, about... You go to that piece of shit Hollis?" Brett reached up and massaged his temples between his thumb and forefinger. "...When did you last see him?" he asked, trying to think it through, sounding tired. Jackson had said the guy had been involved in the serial killer case. Maybe he had been busy - though whether that was good or bad, Brett didn't know. Too busy to get her the information - or too busy to sell Brett out. "And what did you tell him? What the fuck did you tell him?"

"Nothing." she said. "Just that I wanted you out. Why was my business. He tried little things. Tricks, little 'so about your friend' so I told him I never said you were my friend. So even the little ways he tried to figure out the angle I was playing, I didn't give him." Eris sighed. "Which means I can still play angles, I can just switch it around. Make him think I want you for some personal, nefarious reason. That I can play. I just need to figure out how to get him off of it now." she said. "I'll think of something." Then she opened her mouth to answer his first question, and stopped. She'd been going to say 'this morning' but it had been last night. "Last night." she said. "I didn't set up the meet, though. I got a note. Apparently so did he."

He ran his hand up and through his hair and down the back of his head to rest it on his neck. "He's got my name and your name - hell, I can't believe you told Hollis you were alive." That alone seemed stupid - unless it was another case like Jackson, but she'd seemed shaken about Jackson and this? This she'd just ridden, until now. "You did tell him, didn't you? he didn't just find out - you went to him, didn't you? And now... Notes - what kind of notes?" Right now, this all seemed to be spinning out of control.

"Well, he was the only cop I had any real history with." Eris said. "This was before the boyscout showed up, before anything." she said. She didn't answer that she'd gone to him. It would just get into a lot of things he didn't want to hear, so she saved it. "It was an anonymous note. Something about dead sirens. I don't know. It was clear whoever sent it knew about me." she said. She smiled, though it was a bitter expression, not that he'd be able to see it in the dark. "Remember how I said I have a very limited time?" she asked, though it was rhetorical.

"Fuck," Brett swore under his breath as he started pacing in the darkness. There were too many angles here, and every moment things started to get more and more complicated. What the fuck were they doing? They were gonna get themselves killed, seriously gonna get themselves killed. Not just her deciding to take one for the team or whatever bullshit she'd decided in her own fucking head, but all of them. If this went wrong, it would go so very wrong and it wasn't like Brett had ever really played this game before. She had, he got that, but that was before. Now, now she was someone else and she wasn't playing with a full deck any more. He gave him a moment or two of utter and unbridled silent panic and then pulled his shit together, turning to her. "Okay, let's lay this out - what've we got and who've we got to deal with?" he said, mentally preparing himself to break this down like he would a case. He hadn't played anything like this before, but he'd worked plenty of cases, dealt with plenty of clusterfucks from the other side. He just needed to bring this back onto familiar territory. Just another problem that needed to be solved. "Hollis, Haas and some unknown. Hollis is a jerk who's not above doing some shady deals, we know that. In fact, you probably know more about what he's capable of than I do. He's also currently working with Haas on the serial killer case, so their paths are crossing right now. Haas - he's about as straight as they come, but he's got no fucking sense of judgement at times. He could put a foot wrong thinking he's doing the right thing. But at least we know where we stand with him - controlled, he's predictable. Mostly. And the unknown? Is unknown. Big fucking question mark. Where did the note come from? Did anyone see anything? Anything about the paper, take it no return address or anything fucking obvious like that? What about the writing? Anything you recognise?" he asked, reeling off the list of questions as they sprang to mind. He didn't know if any of this would help, but it was definitely helping him to focus, to think, that was for sure.

It was a little overwhelming for her, with all the questions he fired off. She needed to keep track of them. Quietly, she slid down the wall, crouching against it. She watched the light from the stairwell, and tried to organize everything. In the end, she rubbed at her temple. "...you need to slow down." she told him, voice quiet. Then she started to try and work out what she had answers to. "Typed. No handwriting. Pinned to my door, no envelope. Dead...sirens, something. It said to meet at dock..." he had to stop again, wracking her brain for which one. "...thirty four, I think, but I could be wrong." She didn't want to give him a definite if it wasn't something she could know solidly. "He showed, was quite unhappy with it as well, he got a note too. Same sort of thing."

Brett considered this, with what she'd said before. And, he slowed down. "So, both of you got a similar note, making it sound like the other one had sent it?" he checked, because that was what it sounded like. "Was there anyone else there? Anyone could have been watching? What happened?" he asked her, making himself stop at three related questions.

"I wouldn't say it sounded like the other had sent it. Hollis isn't that poetic." she said. She thought about it, trying to remember details. Letting her eyes slip shut, it was easier. Cold, rain, the sound of the drops on her umbrella. It was easier for her to recall details if she actually tried to do that, though that was something she was only discovering now. "No one else was around. I got there after I got the note, not sure what to expect, but I couldn't not show. Not if someone knew. Might have been a set up, but there wasn't a lot I could do about that. Yes, someone could have been watching, it was a dock. You know the docks, there's a thousand places people could hide. But if they did, they got there before me. Which is entirely possible, considering." she continued. "He showed up. He was hurt. Something with the serial killer, which he said was wrapped. We drove around, talked for a little while, he took the note to try and dust for prints, not that I think he'll get any. Then he dropped me at the park." And then she'd been lost for several fucking hours, but Brett didn't need to know that. It was irrelevant.

"The docks? What time was this again?" he asked, knowing that he'd been at the docks last night as well. Strange fucking coincidences. Maybe.

"Late. Very late. Could've been morning by then." she told him. And she hadn't got home til well after it was light out, since she'd spent so much fucking time lost. And met some crazy in the park who threw a shoe at her.

"I didn't see anyone down at the docks," he told her. "I was down there myself - took quite the tour. Didn't see you, or Hollis, but I didn't see anyone else either. Except Jackson, but he's not your guy - he was on a stake out of his own and it definitely didn't include you."

"There are a lot of docks." Eris said. "Maybe we just missed each other. Which, considering, is a fairly lucky thing." she said. Christ with Hollis around and the boyscout, all four of them meeting up would have been a whole lot of badness. "I can't be sure on the time, Brett. You know that." she said, not wanting him to land everything on what could be a faulty short circuit in her head. "All I know is we met up, got out of there right the hell away, and I wasn't home til after first light. ...and crazy shoe-throwing bums hang out in the park at night. That's not really news, though."

"I know that," Brett agreed - to her lack of ability with time recall, the fact there were a lot of docks and the existence of bums in the park. "Just saying I didn't see anyone, and I was looking. It's about as good as you can get, doesn't mean that there wasn't anyone there though. Course, it could always be that it was Hollis, for some reason. Set the whole thing up himself, to see what you'd do. How you'd react."

"Could have." she said. "Or, someone's setting us both up." she said. "And we've got no idea whatsoever which it is. All I know is I'm made, apparently. And there's nothing I can do about that." Time kept just ticking away, and she could feel it slipping. She really did feel like her time was going to be up. She didn't want him brought down in the crossfire, and she didn't want to leave what she'd started unfinished. That was a problem for her. A rather large one.

"You could disappear again," Brett suggested. "Ditch your job at the Round, and that apartment and melt into the city. It would buy you at least some time, time to work out where to go next, maybe even to figure out who the note sender is and what to do about it."

"I don't have anywhere else to go." she told him, feeling like she'd said that about a zillion times and he still refused to actually acknowledge it. "I can't just melt back into the city. Especially not what they've reprinted my story, recently, even. It would also mean I couldn't keep filtering information to Jackson, unless you wanted to start doing that. And setting up somewhere else would require money, and I don't have a lot of that." She had some. Some she'd be happy to give him, because she owed him, but she didn't consider it hers.

"There's here," he pointed out. He'd been planning to use this place for himself, but things had really changed since she got here, and he could much more easily relocate. hell, he could just give notice on his current place and rent somewhere else in the city, if it came down to it. "And if things are going south, yeah, I can deal with Jackson." Somehow. It was something he'd been trying to avoid, because he was firmly of the opinion that if Jackson found out the whole story, he'd go in all guns blazing and they'd all be in the shit. but, right now, it seemed like they were fairly in the shit anyhow.

"No." she said. The decision was immediate, she didn't think about it at all. Just no. She shook her head and everything, even if he didn't see it. "No. Besides, what for? So I can become a ghost, existing here and hiding? I'm not doing that." It was not-fun enough just being here now, she didn't especially like the idea of being here on a regular basis. "Maybe I could just give Jackson everything. Or almost everything, then I can give the rest to the paper, hand a few things over to you, and take on one of the higher ups. That'd give them enough to think about. And if I were gone, Hollis might stop. Maybe." She really hated this. If she'd just known...but she hadn't, and it had been before she'd had other options. Still.

"No," Brett said, in exactly the same tone she had used. "I'm not gonna let you kill yourself over this, Princess. That hasn't changed. We'll find a way through this. Look, Jackson's gonna move on Babylon any day. And with what we fed him, he's not just stopping there - he's going to the whole of the O'Malley's. And the Echo's gonna be all over whatever you sent them. Things are gonna start happening, and soon - you just need to keep out of sight, keep you head down for a few days, week tops. Then we can see where we are. But we can't tell that without giving it some time."

She pushed herself to her feet, and walked closer to where she could hear him. "I'm not just going to disappear." she said. "If I do, who knows what digging'll start. What Jackson'll do if I do that, what Hollis'll do." she said, not recognizing that she'd remembered Jackson's name this time. "Or what some unknown person'll do who knows about me. I don't really want to start provoking someone I don't even know, when I don't know what they're capable of." So, she wasn't going to go hide. It just wasn't her style, if nothing else.

"And who knows what digging'll start if you die," Brett shot back, aware that she was approaching in the dark. "Sure, you could just be out for revenge against the people who tried to kill you, but then again, you linked yourself to me in Hollis' head, didn't you? Me, who a little bit of digging on his part will find that I work for those same people - if he doesn't already know. So, why the hell would you set out to destroy the O'Malleys, but at the same time, want to get one of them out? Wouldn't that look kinda really fucking suspicious to anyone who could think it through? It doesn't add up, and you going down would just highlight that."

"That's what I was saying earlier. That I could play a different angle." she told him, stopping when she knew she was close to him, but before she made anything like contact. "I know I could get him to believe I wanted you for my own...purposes." she said. "I take out the family and keep a little toy to play with on my own terms. Clearing your name just would ensure that I'd be free and clear to do whatever I wanted with you. I'm fairly certain that it's an angle I could get him to believe." Easily, even. "If he still goes for clearing you regardless, we know he's more fucked up than even I gave him credit for. If he doesn't, maybe he's more on the level than that. Either way it gives him a plausible story he could accept and not look to hard into."

"You need to be alive to play the angles," Brett pointed out. "And... I think that one would work," he admitted. "Especially considering I was the one that dumped you in the river. If you led people to believe that you had something over me, maybe it amuses you to keep the one that was meant to kill you."

"Exactly." she said. "Also, he tried to talk to me about my case, and I told him I wasn't interested. That could be used to play in as well. If I already knew my target...I wouldn't need to know what details the police did or didn't follow up on." she finished for him. "And I know I would need to be alive to play the angle." she added, tone slightly quieter. "Though if we're turning me into the O'Malley's personal angel of vengeance...we should probably think about the angles on that, too."

Brett was willing to talk about it. Anything that was her not talking about immediately going out and getting herself killed he was willing to talk about. "Right - he'd think you made a slip up, given the right push, he could probably be left thinking you'd revealed something you'd meant to keep to yourself. Make him think he'd got one over on you," Brett pointed out. "And I said it before - if you can get the city believing that you'll single handedly take down anyone who tries to cross you, and you do it in a big enough way, it could be good for you. It could make the other players in town think twice before trying anything. That way, you wouldn't have to hide and you'd have a certain amount of immunity."

She thought about what he was saying, considering it. "I'd need someplace to start." she said. "I'd need some direction to go. If I came out, did it big, let people know that hey, I've got nothing to lose, I would happily take down anyone else in my path...which...in total honest, in a lot of cases I could actually pull off, if I tried hard enough..." she trailed off, reaching out. She crushed her fingertips along his lower back, skating them across as she walked around behind him. "I could 'keep' you." she said, ideas sort of slowly forming in her mind. "There's just one problem."

"...And what's that?" he asked, turning his head towards her as she walked behind him, so that when she came to the side, he'd be looking at her.

She looked up at him, hand still lightly against his back. He felt warmer than she did. "I'm not capable of this anymore." she said. "Before? I could pull this off no problem, in a heartbeat. I could set everyone up and knock them all down in whatever order I wanted. But now?" She shook her head. "I can't do this. I'd need to remember things better than I will. I'd need to--I'd need to be better. And I'm not. What we're talking about here, what we're really talking about...There's no way I'd be able to pull it off." And she really hated that. Truly hated thinking about it, admitting it, or anything, but a lot was riding on this little idea, and maybe it would work, if she worked anymore. If her mind wasn't a broken little record. She turned away and started heading for the stairs again, not sure where she was headed or what she was doing, really.

He caught her hand as she walked away, stopping her at arms length. "That's why you're keeping me," he told her, his own plan forming in his head as he spoke, a slight angle on things. "I know the problems you have, but other people don't. I could help you fill in those gaps - we play it right and nobody else ever actually needs to know. I've spent the last few years playing the part of the dumb lackey, all muscle and no brain - people will buy it if I just seem to be playing the same role with a new master." It wasn't like he had anywhere else to go, after all. When he'd been talking to Jackson, he'd seen the glimmer of a way out, but he'd known it wouldn't necessarily lead anywhere good. He couldn't go back to his old life, and after what he'd done, people would be looking to either own him, or kill him. At least this way he'd be able to choose his own terms, even if it was only in private.

She didn't try to pull away from him when he stopped her, not trying to take her hand from his. Eris stopped, and considered what he said. "You'd have to be my bodyguard. Someone who was always with me, who never left the room." she continued. Like Clayton had been. Only Clayton'd...possibly turned on her. Or, he'd got played himself. He'd never been the brightest guy in the world, she could actually buy either scenario. "We'd have to be careful." Extremely careful. But she didn't immediately shoot down his proposal, either. If she could keep the secret, if people didn't know what it was her limitations were...it could work. It could be possible. Which meant they'd need something to start with. Some venture, even if she wasn't sure what. Hm.

Brett took a step towards her, not letting go of her hand. "A grouchy, bullheaded, overprotective bodyguard who would refuse to leave you alone, even when you told him that you needed to talk privately with someone. Which wouldn't be your fault - it was out of your hands, of course," Brett agreed. "You've got no fucking clue why you still keep me around and one of these days you're gonna get rid of me. Only you don't. And it's the worst kept secret in town why you don't," he provided. Having to be careful with it went without saying, but right now the main alternative was along the lines of 'rocks fall, everybody dies'. 'Being careful' really seemed like the preferred option.

She leaned back until she was against him, thinking about what he said. It was an angle she could see potential for. Instead of trying to tiptoe in the background, come out and make a big show of it instead. "We'd need a game to run. A business." she said. "I know a lot of the girls at Babylon would still be loyal to me." she told him. Which was a start, even if she didn't know what to do with that. Not quite. "...problem being if I went back into business, the boyscout would pinch me in a heartbeat, and some of the things I was required to do to keep myself in business I'd no longer be willing to do." she told him. She'd had a few clients that she'd had to 'entertain' from time to time. Not often, but often enough. And she'd already made her decisions on that sort of thing and she wasn't going to start breaking them.

Being that she'd already discounted it, Brett didn't feel the need to add in there that he wouldn't run a whorehouse anyway. He knew his morals had become rather more malleable in the last few years, but there were certain places he wouldn't go. Even if she had her own rules about that kind of thing. "Then we find something else," he said instead. "There's got to be something..."

"So what do we do with a bunch of soon to be ex-whore girls, no proper place of business--which we'll need, by the way and have no means of actually getting--a good cop and a shady cop paying way too much attention to the both of us...and a crime family that we need to topple and fast?" she asked, not sure this even sounded like something workable. Maybe if they had more money. Or time. Someplace to start. Though...she supposed there was always the box she'd left in Babylon. That had a chunk of change in it that would be decent. She'd always figured on leaving it to Brett, but...maybe she'd put it to other uses.

"Something legal," Brett told her. "Or, at least, nominally legal - that gets the cops off our back." Course, 'legal' wasn't always the easiest route to take, since everyone was trying to squeeze into a small market. "Your girls have any other abilities?" he asked her. The rest, well, he didn't have any answers there either.

She thought about it, feeling warmer as she leaned against him, and she still had hold of his hand. "Just what comes with the territory. Seduction, small talk, a good ear, the ability to tell people what they want to hear, social niceties...or at least, I taught them social niceties. Most of them didn't know anything about that before, but I catered to a higher class than they were used to." she told him, mind ticking along. A part of an idea was starting to form. Something that would at least be classed as legal.

He finally gave and slipped an arm around her waist, dropping into silence as she talked. This wasn't his area - even once he'd started working for the O'Malleys he'd specifically and bluntly stayed away from the 'new business' side of things. It had been a personal choice then. Now it seemed like a huge gap in his education.

Part of her was vaguely surprised that he did that, even if they'd been standing there holding hands in the dark like teenagers for the past few minutes. Her mind wasn't really focused there, though. Instead, she was much more focused on the problem at hand. "What about an escort service?" she asked. "We would provide company for a specified amount of time...if anything else happened, that'd be the business of the clients and the escorts, not us. Not required, of course, and as far as I know, perfectly legal, unless they're going to outlaw social functions. People've been doing it for years, of course. We'd just...mainstream it."

"Well, it's legal," Brett agreed. "And it could get interesting, depending on who your target clientèle would be. And to really make it work, you'd have to look at the cream." He thought he could live with something like that. "We'd be looking at that anyway. It needs to be something with enough connections to keep people interested. Interested, worried, looking over their shoulders and more invested in leaving us alone than quietly taking us out." Not that it would preclude someone doing that, but Brett knew that there were some people who were just untouchable - they needed to make themselves those people.

"High class. Nothing that the lower class could even begin to think about affording. If we're doing this at all, that's what it'd need to be. We'd have to go in, set up shop, and immediately establish ourselves as a major player. You don't do that by having night fares for five dollars. Also, we'd have to start hitting up every high society party we could. Functions, everything. Make donations the second we were able. Make it look like we've got far better assets than we do." she said. "Start gathering intel again. Let people know that I still have more than enough, maybe make it clear that it was the O'Malleys that had it coming, that we took them down for what they tried to pull with Babylon. It'd make people think twice, especially after they go down." She paused for a moment. "I asked Jackson for a heads up. So before they raid Babylon, I could get my girls out. I can still do that. I'll just have something else to offer them if we're seriously considering this and not just pipe dreaming."

"So far, it's our best option," Brett agreed. "The big question seems to be money." Actually, the big question was whether they could pull it off at all - maybe with a side of could they actually succeed in downing the O'Malleys, but money seemed so much more of an accessible big question, so Brett was going with it.

"I have some. I haven't been spending what I've been making at the club. And, inside Babylon, I've got some stashed. It should still be there. Also, if the girls have anything left--and that's a big if, with the O'Malley's in there now--if they do, I know they'd put in. It was how I built Babylon in the first place. You get someone believing in the idea, wanting to be part of it, and they put in a share to help realize it." she said, shifting a little to turn towards him. "We'd really need to decide where we're setting up shop." she said. "What we're calling ourselves, and when exactly we want to drop the bomb on the city that I'm not quite as dead as they thought."

"We'd need somewhere in a good part of town. Doesn't need to be big, just a nice office or something where people could call. And for when to let everyone know that you're not dead... I'd say since we're going with public, we should really go with it. So you need to turn up somewhere public - preferably a party, preferably once we're up and running enough for there to be some powerful men there with your girls on their arms. And preferably somewhere that's big enough for nobody to be able to make a move," he told her. He didn't have the first clue how to get invited to something like that, or how they even got there. That was her world - he knew that he'd only be playing a support role in all of this.

She hummed slightly, sliding her hand up his chest towards his neck, and she put both arms up around it. "I'd rather a building with a loft, then there'd be living quarters there, and if anyone wants to try and break in, the risk is all the worse. They'd think twice. Possibly someplace with a building nearby that can be eventually owned, housing for the girls. Part of what they loved about Babylon was having a safe place where they knew people would back them up, even if it was just each other. There's a real solidarity inside Babylon. I think if we set up something similar they'd be more comfortable." she said. "I'd feel that they were safer, they would, and they'd be close by in case of problems." Then she was thinking about the party angle. "I think attending some party would be the way to go. That wouldn't be hard at all. I just want to make sure that everything is in motion when we do that."

"Well, starting out, we wouldn't be able to afford a building - not unless we wanted to compromise on location. And if you're going to aim upmarket, you need an upmarket address. Maybe for a start we can find an office with a place attached, then aim to move up as soon as we can," he told her, wondering if she was hoping to get her way by doing what she was doing. "And find space for the girls - though if the business is providing housing and we do want to walk that fine line, the rule needs to be laid down that if they come to any 'private arrangements' they don't do that at home," he warned. It would be far too easy for that to come back in again, especially if they were using girls who used to work at Babylon and she wanted to set up similar arrangements for housing. They needed to understand and be very clear about the fact that this was a different business.

"Agreed." she gave him. "Any other arrangements have nothing to do with us including anything involving locations for other dealings." she said. She didn't actually know if she believed in this. If she thought it would actually work, at all, or if she thought they were both just dreaming aloud. But it didn't sound impossible. "And fine. Rental of an uptown office, living quarters attached. I know how to make something look better than it is. And if I can get into Babylon...I might be able to get us a little more, depending on what's left in my quarters." she said. Which would include clothes, jewelry, other expensive things. Things that could be sold, or used, depending. "Which leaves us a name." she said.

"Names aren't my strong point," Brett told her. He wasn't a particularly creative person. When you got down to it, Brett was straightforward to the point of bullishness. When he played games, they were pretty straightforward ones - usually based around alienating as many people as possible. No, Brett didn't really do 'creative'. He was only just really learning how to see the angles in things.

She pushed up on her toes, though only on one foot, since her other still hurt, and she used him for balance. Eris didn't go for kissing his lips, she kissed his neck, where the scratches she'd put on him should be, even if this entire time she'd not gotten a good enough look at him to see them. It was a soft kiss. "I'll think about it. You start looking uptown, when you have chances to. You'd be in the best position to get my box out of Babylon." she told him.

That stung, the pressure, her breath and then her lips on the scratches. They'd scabbed in the last couple of days, but they were still tender. He didn't mind the pain though, and he stretched his neck slightly, lengthening the column under her, a silently encouraging move that was the opposite of his normal habit of ducking his head when anyone tried to get a look at his neck. Either side, at the moment. "Where in Babylon?" he asked her, he voice holding the slightest hint of preoccupation now, though he tried to keep it out. They were talking, after all. She couldn't just assume there'd be other things, simply because he'd sent her flowers. Flowers she'd hardly even mentioned, except to tell him that they were wrong. There was no pleasing women. Not that that had been what he'd been trying to do, but still. They were talking.

She continued what she was doing, though it was slow. Very very slow, light. Soft. "First floor. Second room in the left wing, on the left side. It was Annie in there when I was there, it might have moved, now, but that's the room. Go in, get her to go get you a drink. Make it something a little complicated, or something Kess'll have to hunt down, like a specific year of wine." she said. enough that you can move the bed back from the wall. Behind it, there's a loose floorboard, it'll be under the rug. Inside...you'll have to dig a little, is a box. Get it, and you can keep whatever's inside. There should be enough that you'd be able to make a down payment at least on a place." she said. There were also some things in there, probably the only things in the world she'd consider 'personal' and while she'd planned on him getting the box eventually, she'd thought she'd be gone by then. But...whatever. Perhaps she wouldn't be.

He had to admit to himself that that was nice, in a setting his head swimming kind of a way. He had to fight to concentrate on her instructions, the directions and, in the end, he pushed her away, enough to force her to take a step back. "Annie's room," he said, checking he had it right. "First floor, second room, left wing. Loose floorboard under the bed. Right?" he checked.

She supposed she hadn't expected him to do that, and so she stumbled just a little when he pushed her away. And, she was massively disappointed, even if she didn't say anything about it. she did draw back, though. She turned, towards the steps again. "Right." she told him. "If no one's found it by now...and no one has in years so I don't imagine they have now, it'll be there. If it's not we're in real trouble...but it should be there." She sure as hell hoped it was. Though she didn't figure the O'Malleys had gone in for heavy redecorating or anything, so she didn't figure they'd done anything to the rooms, and Annie'd never suspected a thing, and she'd been there since the beginning. She in fact, was one of those trustworthy, loyal girls she'd been mentioning.

"Then I'll get it for you," he promised. It shouldn't be too hard, considering who he was. Sending some girl scurrying to fulfill a random whim would be easy, given the conditions they worked under now. He might have to scare the living daylights out of her to make sure she didn't come back until she'd found what he wanted, but, again, he was good at that kind of thing. He thought of the way he'd made Lila cry. Stupid girl, she shouldn't be so soft. Soft women always annoyed him.

"No, get it for you." she said, taking the first step again, back in the light. "You'll have to be the one finding the building and doing the business transactions. So, get it, and use what's in it however's needed." she said. "...get yourself a tux, while you're at it." she told him. "If you're going to be on my arm at a party, you'll need to get shined up properly." Much better than the suits he owned now, that she'd repaired time and again for him. "The box'll be locked, though just break it. The key'd be in my quarters if they haven't cleared them out and it'd not be worth it to find it." she added. The box itself wasn't important, it was what was inside.

"A tux?" he asked her, measuring her step for step, keeping the same distance away from her. He bit back the remark that he didn't do tuxes. Damn. "...I guess I do tuxes now, huh?" he asked, reluctantly. "You'd better add to that whole overprotective and stubborn thing that your bodyguard is uncomfortable in the presence of his betters," Brett advised. He hated tuxes - they were too tight around the neck and he couldn't get the hang of a bow tie. And he'd have to shave.

That had her smirking slightly, and as she stepped up onto the second stair, she turned to look back over her shoulder at him, since he actually did appear to be following a little. "Yes, tux. You'll look good in it. And you can be as uncomfortable as you want. It'll probably even lend to your reputation." she told him. "Scowl a lot, you've got a good one." she told him. Which was true, really. He did. She saw it quite often, aimed in her direction, she just usually ignored him for it.

He stopped at the bottom of the stairs - with her on the second one up, they were actually largely of a height. "I'll look ridiculous and uncomfortable in it," he amended, reaching out for her. "Where are you going?" he asked, though it wasn't quite the right question. With his tone, the right question probably would have been 'where the hell do you think you're going?'.

"You won't look ridiculous, you'll look good." she told him. "I'll miss the scruff, though. Maybe you'll get to keep it, after we're established. I'll tell people that you're just a little unruly at times. That I don't always know what you're going to do." she said. Then she arched a brow at him as he reached or her, and at the question with it's tone. "Someone pushed me away a minute ago. I was taking the hint." she told him. She didn't stop him though, at all, sort of interested in seeing what he might do there. Especially with the tone. That she liked.

"Someone else was trying to think, and make sure he remembered directions - and someone else was being wilfully fucking distracting," he pointed out. He hadn't meant that she was to go anywhere. Just that he needed a moment or two without her all over him. He took hold of her by her wrist and pulled slightly, not enough to throw her off balance, but enough to pull her down the steps if she didn't resist. He knew what he wanted, but still, there were definite limits to what he'd do.

Eris resisted for just a second, then came down the step as he pulled her. "You might need to get used to that." she told him, looking him in the eyes. There was a light little smirk on her lips. "Keeping your head in the game while distracted. Especially if we're going to be going out together." she told him. "You don't think I'd actually leave you alone, do you?" she asked, tone edging into innocent, but not fully.

He raised an eyebrow and looked at her. "We're going to be going out together?" he asked, wondering at her phrasing there. "You fucking your bodyguard is part of the act, is it?" he asked, this time more challengingly, choosing his words deliberately and saying them with a purposeful bluntness. Neither of them had mentioned what had happened the other night. Neither of them had said shit about what it meant or where it might or might not lead. Sure, they'd touched more than ever before this time. And she'd had an easy sensuality around him today. But they hadn't actually talked about anything.

"You're going to be on my arm. And yes, you're there to protect me. But still." she said. She looked up at him, and considered for a few long moments, also fully aware of the fact that they hadn't discussed anything, and she really didn't actually plan to remedy that. She didn't know what to say on it. She didn't know what he'd say on it. So, really, she was kind of good to roll with whatever, and not put words to it that would must muddy up the water. "And if everyone thinks I'm...spoken for, that is, I'll get less propositions I'll have to find creative ways to turn down, and you'll have even more call to be overprotective and show people what is and is not acceptable when it comes to your mistress." she told him. "I would really rather my days of being pawed by old men who want me to call them 'daddy' to be over. That would ensure it would be. Plus, it'd be fun. They always get so pissy when they don't get their way, and if we're going for making heads turn..." she trailed off.

"I'll take that as a yes then," Brett said, comfortable with just talking about things in terms of the public act. "If we're gonna make it work, out there, you're gonna have to be the one in charge. In control. It'll be best if they all think you've got me by the balls - quite literally. And best if they think that's the only way you can keep me in line. It'll fit with what they know about you, and they'll think I only have one brain I can use." He pulled her in, putting his hand to the back of her neck again. "Just don't ever make the mistake of thinking that's how things really are," he told her, warningly, his voice low.

She thought that it all fit together nicely. Everything he said was true, it would work. If they played it right--and she thought they could--then it would work just fine. People would think what they wanted them to. It could all be played in in whatever way worked to their advantage. She smiled at him when he took her by the back of the neck again. It was a dark little expression, but in no way negative. "Wouldn't dream of it. Besides...if that were the way it really was? I'd have no interest." Which was absolutely true. She rather liked Brett just how he was. Stubborn, abrasive bastard that he could be. But he never just fell in line, either. Sometimes it might be easier if he did, but he didn't. And while she was sure he could keep up playing the subservient lackey type, she liked the reality of who he was. "Have any more threats for me?" she asked, tone light. Amused, just on the edges.

"Do I need to make any?" he asked her, scowling a little at the amusement in her tone, as if she were laughing at him. Yeah, she'd easily be able to play the part of the superior bitch - he'd just have to remind her occasionally that she wasn't any better. He just hoped she never actually learned that lesson. It would be no fun if she did, for either of them. Just like she wouldn't want a subservient lackey, neither would he.

"I don't know, have anything else you want to make clear to me while you're at it?" she asked. "Any other ground rules you want me to be aware of before we actually start in on this?" It was just that little spark of exciting that burned when he did that sort of thing. And she knew part of it was that occasionally? She did wonder if he wasn't going to do something to her. Purely masochistic of her, she liked the power struggle between the two of them. She liked that it didn't really end at any clear point. It just shifted. She reached out and traced her fingernails along his forearm, not letting her eyes drift from his at all.

He considered her, drifting his eyes along her shadowy form. "I think I'd prefer to tell you as we go along," he said, after a moment or two. Prefer to let her know when she stepped out of line. Give her a chance to step out of line. Somehow, he thought they'd both prefer that. He didn't want to dictate to her, after all. Not as such. Anyway, she'd only ignore him.

She did prefer that as well. Then, there could be little snags along the way she could catch herself on. Or he could. Little plays here and there. Which actually, now that she was thinking about it, with the public personas they'd been talking about, they could play with on all sorts of levels. Which was a spark she hadn't actually thought she'd so much feel again. She hadn't forseen looking forward to anything. Not anymore, not where things went. Not when she knew her most likely scenario ended with 'and then she was tortured and killed, never to be heard from again and everyone forgot she even existed'. It was something she really just didn't see coming. And when she did, just in that moment, recognizing what she was feeling for what it was, she almost didn't know what to do with herself. Then she did and she pushed forward, up against him, and she nuzzled against the scratches, a little harder than she had been, but not enough to really hurt him. "I'm sure you'll inform me if I should step out of line. And you know I'll inform you." she said, since she wasn't fully handing over into 'tell me I've been bad' mode. It just wouldn't work for them. Not really.

He took an intake of breath as she pressed against the scratches and he pulled her back by her neck, though only by her neck, his other hand keeping her lower body pressed tight against him, so that she'd have to stretch at the waist. "Then that for starters," he told her, deciding he had something for her after all. "You don't mark me like that." He rethought that and amended. "Not unless you have a point to make. Understand?" he told her rather than actually asking a question. He could have told her why. he could have explained that Jackson had seen them, that he'd been asking questions that could have been awkward, but he didn't.

There was the tiniest little sound from her when he pulled her back like that, and she looked at him. "What if I did have a point to make?" she asked. "And would you like to see the bruises you left on me, sweetheart?" Eris asked, tone light. Amused. "I was going to wear an off the shoulder dress tonight...but opted not to because I didn't know what I was walking in on. If I'd known it was only you...I might have." And really, he had happened to have bruised her up pretty well. She glanced towards her shoulder, where the bite was hidden by the shoulder of her dress, which could be pushed down or aside fairly easily. "You can look." she told him, lightly encouraging.

He hadn't actually intended to bruise her, to mark her. Not as such, though he knew that he'd been rough with her. More than rough - god, he'd wanted to be rough. It wasn't how he'd used to be, but knowing what he wanted, well - it had been a long time. Apparently that was how he was now. And considering the amusement in her tone, she didn't seem to mind. Unless she was laughing at him - there was always that possibility from the bitch. Either way, apologies weren't on the menu as he pulled aside the shoulder of her dress, just able to make out the darker skin in the shaft of light that fell down the stairwell. He really had marked her. "Does it hurt?" he asked her, ensuring that he stripped all actual concern out of his tone, kept it gruff, forthright, unemotional.

"A little." she answered. "When I raise my arm." Which it did. Not bad, so she didn't play it up, she was honest. It hurt a little. She'd had worse in her life, and those had been much less fun in getting, so she also didn't sound like she minded. "You left other ones on me too." she told him, watching his face, a little fascinated. She wasn't sure what his expression was saying, really. She recognized the flat tone, of course, but that was less what she was paying attention to, and more she was watching his eyes. The curve of his mouth.

Brett wasn't entirely sure what to think about that. He'd never been one to think violence towards women was in any way a good thing. He'd never hit a woman, unless he'd had to in the course of his job, but even then he tried to avoid it. As far as he was concerned, men that hit their girlfriends were the lowest of all the scum on god's green earth. But here he was, looking at bruises that he'd put on her, and all they did was to bring back memories of what they'd done to get them there - and just how much he'd like to do that again. Just how excited he was getting, just thinking about it. He just wasn't sure what to think about that, how to handle it in any way.

She kept her eyes on him, unable to look away. She did lean a little closer, though, if he'd let her. She tried. "You can touch it if you want to." she told him, voice a soft, close little whisper. What was going on in his head was something she could fairly closely assume. Brett had always been a straight shooter, back in the day. And even if he'd fallen pretty far, she knew he still had some of those tendencies. That hero complex he couldn't quite detach himself from. Everything that went with it. While she'd occasionally wondered if he was going to haul off and crack her one, he never had, even in the middle of their most terrible arguments. So she had to wonder just what was going through his mind, when she was pretty sure he'd never been the type to hit a girl.

He let her lean in. Right in this moment, he wasn't in a position to stop her doing anything. Not whilst he was this unsure about things. It wouldn't last - he'd snap out of things sooner or later, he just needed a push, but right now, he was in between everything as he shifted his hand from her neck to trace her fingertips over the darkness of the bruise, feeling her still soft skin beneath it. His gaze flickered occasionally between her shoulder and her eyes, as if checking it was okay.

She didn't give him any indications that it wasn't okay. In fact, she exhaled softly when he did brush his fingers over it, and she got a little closer. "You know it's alright." she told him, voice still soft. close. Just for his ears, even if they were alone in a very abandoned house. "When I woke up the next morning I did admire it in your mirror." She'd also left him a kiss on that mirror, but didn't say anything about that. Like she didn't mention she'd left things there either. Or that she'd dressed up for him tonight. That she'd wanted to look good for him, even if he'd never really said anything to her about how he thought she looked. Which possibly was why she wanted to make the effort. To try and impress him. She just wouldn't say a word about it.

His gaze flickered up from her shoulder again at that, meeting her eyes as he pressed down a little with his fingers on the bruise - much like she had to the grazes on his neck earlier. "You really are a twisted bitch," he said, a quiet growl. And he wasn't much better - both because he liked what he'd done to her, and because he liked the fact that she liked it. God did he like that.

Her eyes closed for a moment and she made a soft sound. A smile also spread over her lips. "Which fires you up more?" she asked. "The fact that I'm a twisted bitch...or the fact that you like that about me?" Her eyes opened back up to watch him at that, figuring that there'd be retaliation for that. With the switch from the uncertainty to the growl, she figured he'd had a mental shift. Even if she'd been able to tell she had his attention before now. Still, there needed to be that change over, and she wondered how long it would take for him to not need the push. Or if she'd need to deliberately set him off. Really, she didn't mind either way. It still kept her wondering, it still held her attention like nothing else in her life did at the moment.

Almost predictably, his gaze hardened at the question as he felt the anger rise at her putting him on the spot. Even if it was for something he'd already been thinking it himself. But her putting it like that, that assumption from her - that assumed knowledge that was, of course, right. Superior fucking bitch, always thinking she knew it all. "You're a fucking masochist is what you are," he told her, making it sound like a derogatory term, though if it was, he used it about both of them. Because if she was a masochist, what did that make him? Given that he liked it. Then again, it had been a long time since Brett had been able to consider himself in any kind of a positive light.

"Maybe I am. Or maybe you just bring it out in me." she told him. Which was closer to the truth, really. While she'd been on both sides of the fence on that particular score in her life, or at least played the roles of it, this was actually a natural state with him. It wasn't an act, it wasn't feigned. It wasn't something she was doing because she thought it was what he wanted out of her. It was just what it was. It was how she reacted to him. It was how they played off of one another. And oddly, she was masochistic with him without actually being submissive. Which was a bit of a switch, really. Generally they went hand in hand. But also, generally speaking, you didn't have two dominant people sparking off of one another with anything that actually worked. This did. Or, it did so far. "You didn't answer the question." she added. "So what is it?" she asked. "What actually gets you about all of this? Or is it both? Is it both, and something else? Maybe that I like that about you? Considering if we're handing out labels, you could always share 'twisted' with me."

"Sweetheart, I have no damn intention of answering your question," he told her, his fingers swiping over her bruises, then questing down over her body to where he was fairly sure he'd left others on her. Sure, it was dark and she was still clothed, but he remembered every moment of the other night, he knew where he'd been. "You wanna label me, go ahead - slap whatever fucking labels on me you want. But I'm not gonna give them to you." That would mean admitting things to her and he wasn't ready to do that. Hell, right now, he didn't really know what he wanted to admit to himself. This was all new to him - but he wasn't going to go admitting that to her either, though she should know, if she thought about it. She knew how long it had been for him, knew well enough to know it was years. A substantial number of years. And this wasn't the kind of thing you got to jerk off to in your average porno.

Eris made another little sound when he found another bruise, and she leaned in towards his neck again, to push against the scratches there. He'd been doing most of the marking, really. Hers were just more visible. Even if she really thought he'd liked that, too. He'd certainly seemed like he had. She didn't say anything for a few moments, smiling to herself, exhaling along his skin. "I think you like the bruises on me." she whispered to him. "I think you like knowing you put them there."

"You like them being there, don't you?" he asked, turning it back round on her, his hand leaving the bruises and going for the fastenings on her dress. "You looked at them, in the mirror." he had to get his head around her doing that, but he needed to get his head around all of this. He was sick, he knew that, on some level, this was sick. But it didn't make it any less real, and considering what he was now, was it really that surprising that he had some sick fucking kinks thrown in there? He was so very, very lost. But at least this, this was something he could enjoy.

"I do." she told him, not going to lie. "Took a while to find them all." she said. Because really, he actually had left a few on her person. And that wasn't even mentioning the tender places on her scalp where he'd ripped some of her hair out. He'd done that, too. He'd been so wrapped up and riding the moment that he'd definitely not checked himself at all. Which was something that she'd gotten quite the charge out of. She made the slightest experimental move to pull back away from him, just to see if he'd keep her there.

He let her move away just enough that he could pull her back again, feeling a thrill in that that was both unexpected and welcome. He pulled her in a little more tightly, finding the zip of her dress and yanking it hard. he didn't rip this one, like he had the one she'd been wearing the other night, but it pulled enough to threaten as he exposed her skin of her back to the cold air of the basement.

A smile spread over her lips at that and her eyes fell shut for a moment. Not really that he could see, so much, since he'd pulled her in tight, but it was there. She dropped her head back, letting her hair fall down her now exposed back, even as she felt goosebumps rise up along her skin from the rush of cold there. She had a feeling she wasn't going to remain cold very long, really, though did wonder what he had in mind for her. In a delightfully excited way. Because she really didn't know, and that was a huge part of the charm in that moment. "I think you should just admit that you like them." she said, voice low. "Or that you liked putting them there in the first place."

Brett quickly stripped her of the dress, pulling and pushing at it until it pooled around her feet, letting her go enough that it could drop to the floor. It had been a nice dress, she'd looked good in it. but Brett was of the opinion that it looked better in a heap on the floor, and she looked better without it as he pulled her forward, taking her back further into the darkness. The only light in the basement was that filtering down from upstairs, but there was nothing really in the blackness of the space, nothing except the mattress in the corner, and that was where he led her, pulling her by a wrist. "And I think you should just shut you mouth about it," he told her, roughly, moments before he spun her round and thrust her backwards so that she was falling. He knew she'd land on the mattress. He wasn't sure though that she knew she would.

She didn't mind being stripped of the dress, wasn't bothered that it was left there on the dirty steps. She didn't mind being led into the dark, either. What shocked her was being pushed. Pushed so she'd fall, very definitely so she'd fall, and she did. There was a short, sharp little sound from her, because she hadn't known there was anything to catch her fall there. She hit the mattress, but she hadn't known it was there in the first place. Her heart rate spiked up just from that second of true fear when she'd thought she was going to hit the wall, or the floor hard. And while she didn't mind if he left bruises on her...that would have been something a bit on the different side. But he'd dropped her onto a bed. Just a very low one.

He heard the sound and knew he'd shocked her and he smiled a little at that, unseen, in the dark. He paused to strip off his shirt - another benefit of darkness, kicking off his shoes as he undid his belt. And then he lowered himself down to the mattress, finding her in the dark and pushing her down, crawling over her. "What did you think? That I'd let you fall?" he asked, a hard edge to his tone. He'd never actually hurt her - not more than she'd like, anyway. Now that they'd established that she did like it. Though, really, he'd thought that before - it had never occurred to him that maybe she hadn't enjoyed the other night and now he knew she had done.

She reached down, to grab his hand, and she brought it up to her neck, so he could feel her pulse threading along, still calming from the jolt she'd gone through. She thought, since he'd done it on purpose, that he'd want to appreciate that he'd done it, that he'd most certainly struck a chord, he'd gotten her heart rate skyrocketing. "Isn't that what you wanted me to think?" she asked, voice a tiny bit breathless. She felt that he'd taken his shirt off, which she thought was actually some sort of progress. He hadn't lost it the other night. She'd felt what lay beneath it, but that was all. It could have been because it was dark, but still. She'd feel him. It was actually something she appreciated, somewhere in the back of her mind.

He could have asked her whether she trusted him, but he didn't. That wasn't a conversation he wanted to have. Especially not right now. He didn't want to have an answer to that - especially when his version of the answer was 'it's complicated'. Because he both did and didn't trust her. He doubted he would ever trust her fully, he figured he'd lost the ability to totally trust some time ago now and he wasn't going to fight to change that just because they were occasionally screwing. So, he didn't ask. What he did do was to place the column of his thumb over her pulse, pressing his fingers down towards the mattress, effectively holding her down as he felt her heart race. "That, just because I pushed you?" Brett asked her, tone purposefully sceptical as his other hand began roaming her body freely, and with a strong touch that was too smooth to be actual groping.

She smiled a little, liking all of this. His tone, how he was touching her, his fingers at her neck. His tone. She let him, eyes falling shut as she did so, and she considered how to answer. "Amazing what a little jolt of fear will do." she said. Even if it wasn't all just the push he'd given her. When they'd started in on this, that was when she'd started feeling her heartbeat pick up. But she wanted to know if he'd try to get that out of her, or if he'd accept the answer she'd given.

He continued his single handed exploration of her body, pushing her remaining clothes out of the way where he could, touching skin, always moving, never settling, keeping her guessing as to where he'd go next - and never quite getting to where she'd want him to be. "Then I guess it'll settle right back down again now you've had your soft landing, won't it," he told her, near enough coming out and calling bullshit.

There it was. She was glad he hadn't just accepted the answer. "It's possible it won't due to other factors that would need to be taken into account." she told him. Such as his presence, and what he was doing. And the fact that he was deliberately making it frustrating. She just wasn't complaining about that. Eris was a fan of foreplay. Too many people skipped right over it and it added. Of course, Brett was her end all of experience with anyone she actually wanted to be with, too, so that likely had something to do with it. But she was glad he seemed to be of a mind to do that at least a bit.

"Really?" Brett asked, sounding surprised - if she was going to be all formal and vague like that, then he was going to feign surprise. He didn't ask what though, and he didn't stop what he was doing, or make it any less direct. He wondered how long he could keep it going before she said anything, before she tried to direct him more.

"Yes, really." she told him. "I'm sure there are certain things you could to do get the reaction. If that's what you're going for." she added. She was quiet for a moment, and she tried to move, just a bit, to see if he'd try and keep her there. "Is that what you're going for?" she asked him, tone light. Innocent, just a bit. Really, he could probably kick it back up in about two seconds, if he wanted to. It wasn't like she wasn't attracted. Like she wasn't already distracted with anticipation.

When she moved, he slipped his hand off her neck, dropping forward a bit onto the mattress, as though she'd slipped out from under him. He could have easily stopped her, but he wanted to know what she'd do if he didn't immediately do so. And because he was waiting to see what she'd do, how she'd follow through with that, he didn't immediately give her any kind of an answer to her question.

When he didn't answer, she took a little initiative of her own. She reached up, and traced her fingernails down the scratches on his neck, not being too light about it, but not trying to make them worse, either. Enough so he'd feel it. "Anticipation," she told him, as she started to trace those nails down his collarbone, his chest. She kept it to where she didn't think his scars were, though. she didn't want to risk kicking up issues, but she did want to play a bit. She was just mentally careful about it. "Is something that can fire you up before anything even happens. Before you're ever touched, when you know it's coming but you're not sure when, or how." Like when they'd been on the stairs, starting all of this. She stopped her nails when they hit the tops of his pants. Then she slid them towards the button, but she didn't hurry herself along with that.

He had to agreed with her there. Anticipation and a little imagination - having an idea about what was going to happen, but not actually knowing how things were going to go. He slid his hand to a stop, on her waist, otherwise not moving, his other hand still pressed into the mattress by her head. He waited, silently, waited to see what she would do, not stopping her, not yet, though in his head that was always an option. Maybe not just in his head. She knew it too, part of their ongoing power struggle, just taken to a different place right now.

She didn't pop the button immediately. She traced her fingertips down a little, along the seams of the material, and then she did. She flicked it fast, and then made a slow sort of progression downwards for the zipper. She teased there, too, again letting her nails trace paths along his skin, much like he'd done, just not quite where he'd want her to. She also didn't actually expose him yet, though a few times seemed just about to do that. "Know what I'm thinking about?" she asked, tilting her head up a little, towards his ear, making it a soft, breathy little whisper.

Brett had dug blunt nails into her waist a little as she returned the teasing, feeling his own frustration rise this time. He'd been at the edge of throwing her back down and taking over again when her question had floated up through the darkness. Wanting his denial, because how could he exactly know? "Not a mindreader, Princess," he said, both giving her what she wanted and withholding it at the same time.

Eris made a light little appreciative sound at his nails there. She smiled, and she leaned closer to his ear, letting her lips brush against it as she spoke. "I'm wondering what you taste like." she told him. Then she waited a few moments for that to sink in. "How's your heart?"

Brett's heart had been running like fucking freight train for the last few minutes - and before then, it hadn't been much slower. It seemed his heartrate was playing tag with the thrills that had been running through him, as much as he didn't tend to outwardly show that kind of thing. Mostly, it could be read in his eyes - except that it was dark down here. Other than that, there were tells in his position, the tension evident in his frame, the way he loomed over her. And, to him anyway, the air felt electric - a spark that only grew with her comments. "Why don't you find out," he said, after a too long gap, his voice low, gravelly, slightly strained. And the words themselves could have referred to either of her comments.

Hearing his voice like that gave her a little thrill all on it's own. And of course, the fact that it took him a second to actually answer her. That had been nice. She pressed her lips in against his throat, where it wasn't hard for her to feel his pulse. Which was, in fact, tripping along nicely. That made her smile an expression she pressed to his skin, so he'd feel it. That, before she pushed herself up on her elbow, and pushed hard at his shoulder to get him to roll onto his back. It would have been nice if she'd have been able to actually push him over, but he had to work with her--he was still a man who was one hell of a lot bigger than her, and pretty built, too. If he didn't work with her, he wasn't going anywhere. She just hoped he did. Unless, of course, he wanted her to say please.

He didn't want her to say please. He never actually wanted to hear her beg for anything. So whilst he provided a nominal fight against being pushed, he went with it, letting her push him back onto the mattress, as though she had actually managed that without his assistance. After all, if she had control for a while, then he could take it back from her. And, also, well - what she was offering wasn't something he was going to turn down.

She sat up on her knees, and didn't reach out to touch him immediately. Instead, she waited, letting him wait, just for a few moments. Enough that he'd be waiting for her to touch him, and not knowing where that might be. When she did, she actually avoided touching his skin. Instead, she tugged his clothes down, out of her way. She almost entirely avoided touching his skin. The only thing she did do was she leaned far enough over that her air would brush against his side, and if she exhaled just a little harder than usual, he'd feel her breath.

He felt vulnerable in those few moments, waiting, not knowing what was going on. Even in the dark, he felt vulnerable and exposed and he began to worry about the light, whether she could actually see him, whether it reached that far, whether she was looking down and examining him, his scars. It was one thing for her to be able to feel them, but seeing them - that was something entirely different. He'd been about to crack, to break when suddenly there was her breath against his skin and instead of breaking, he moaned, a breathy sound, born of surprise and shock at what was by then truly unexpected, as well as an anticipatory pleasure.

That was actually a little unexpected for her. A moan, before she'd touched him. But she liked that. That, she was appreciative of. In a whole lot of ways, really. She moved positions, crawling down, letting her breath and hair ghost along his flesh, instead of properly touching him. Then when she got down where she settled, she exhaled hotly down against him, and she started to lightly dance her fingertips up the inside of his thigh, closer, but not at anything that would be considered a 'fast' rate. She teased, just a little while, though she imagined it was something that felt longer than it was. Then she took hold of him, and let her tongue dart out to get that first little taste, just that.

It did - it felt like she'd been teasing him for an eternity before she finally gave him what he wanted. Only, she didn't. She almost did, but still she was teasing him. He wasn't sure of the rationale behind his movement as he bucked his hips upwards, whether it was from need and want, capitulating to her, or whether it was from somewhere rather more demanding and controlling, wanting to force her onwards. His head would prefer the latter, but right now, he couldn't rule out the former either.

That made her smile as well, and she made him wait just a few heartbeats more, before she actually started. And it was something she's never received complaints over. Something she was confident in--though really, anything related to their current activities she didn't actually have any anxieties about. Her focus was just different than it usually was. Her focus now was him. Purely him, wanting it to be something he was going to think about when she wasn't there. That maybe he'd dream about later. She wanted his undivided attention, and to have him at her mercy, at least for a while.

She got another groan for that, followed by an appreciative moan as he let his head rest back against the mattress, closing his eyes. He reached down and buried a hand in her hair, holding firmly, but not actually putting any pressure on her - as long as she didn't try and move back at all, at least. It felt good like that.

She kind of expected him to pull at her hair a bit, but he didn't. Still, she didn't mind, and she could keep wondering when his grip would get tighter. Like she wondered when he'd yank control back...since really it could be at any given time. She would rather that he didn't quite yet...she was rather busy, after all, but she knew in the back of her mind that it could hit at any time. That was part of the charm, of course. She made a sound in the back of her throat, something designed to give him a little something extra. It worked on two levels. The obvious, and so he could hear it.

He liked the sound on both of those levels. The way it felt was amazing and that certain muffled quality really appealed to him as he felt another thrill go through him on much more than a physical level. He tightened his grip on the back of her head, pushing ever so slightly, but at the same time mostly letting her do what she was doing. Something she was clearly very talented at, though as always, he didn't really linger on the 'why's of that. He knew her past, he'd seen it, they'd talked around it and whilst they never talked about it directly and in detail, he knew what she'd been. But he also held firm to the knowledge, the determination that she wasn't that any more. He didn't and he wouldn't think of her in those terms.

She made another soft sound when his grip tightened, when he pushed a little, but otherwise kept up what she was doing. She was keeping the pace constant. Nothing that was going to push him too hard too fast, but something that he'd be able to enjoy for a while, at least. And while she probably would have wanted to push it harder, she wanted to see if he would encourage that. What he wanted out of it, what he was going to desire. That she couldn't really predict, she didn't have any idea on it. Which was part of what was exciting for her. She did dig her nails in just a little at his side, by his hip with her free hand, to see if that would get a reaction too.

Brett realised that the only thing he didn't fully appreciate about this, the only thing, was the position. He knew that if he had his way, then that would be changed, that he'd get onto his knees at least, or stand, or something where she had less obvious control over the entire situation. But he also knew that he wasn't getting his way - because there was no way in hell he was stopping her, and anyway, he wasn't sure that his legs would work to get him up right now, the things she was doing to him. So, instead, he took his frustration with that small part out on her in other ways. In the way that his grip in her hair tightened even further, twisting slightly so that he could pull at her hair without actually relieving any of the pressure on the back of her head. In the way he took hold of her shoulder in his free hand, squeezing, his fingers fairly evenly spaced, the grip tight enough to maybe leave fingerprint-sized bruises against her skin, this time marking the previously clear shoulder, his blunt nails digging in very slightly, mirroring the feel of her longer and sharper ones on his side.

She wondered if she was going to have to make little rules about being marked as well, but at the moment, couldn't actually fault him for it. She enjoyed the pressure, liked the bite of his nails, liked the pull in her hair, all of it. Besides...they weren't doing anything yet. Not publicly. So he could leave little reminders on her person, she liked them. She also started to kick things up faster when he did it. Faster, a little harder, wanting to get noise out of him, or some other reaction, or more reaction than he'd already just given her. She wanted to keep it going.

He made a guttural sound as she moved things up and bucked up once more, pushing harder on the back of her head, urging her on. He opened his eyes, leaned up a little, but in the dark, he couldn't actually see her. that would be a trade off, he knew - he liked the idea of seeing her, hated the idea of her seeing him. But the difference there was immense. She had the figure of a movie star - his own body was a wreck. Seeing her naked was a turn on - seeing him would most likely have the exact opposite effect. He could never forget that. Part of him still couldn't believe that she'd wanted to continue, even after she'd found out what he felt like. Then again, he hadn't given her a whole lot of time or space to turn him down.

There. Reactions. She liked those. And it spurred her onwards, stepping it up farther, pushing him. She didn't want it to end, though, and she was paying strict attention to him, to how he was reacting to her, so she could abruptly stop before it did--if he didn't stop her first. While she'd been willing to do whatever it took the other night, which included leaving herself untended to...she wasn't so generous tonight. She wanted him. Plus, she wanted to see how he'd react to her stopping if he didn't have a mind to do it on his own.

With the things she was doing to him right now, Brett's mind wasn't on stopping at all. Back of the mind insecurities aside, he had one focus - and that was where she was taking him and the fact that he was pretty quickly going to be getting there. He couldn't remember ever feeling quite like this before, but then again, even back in the day, it wasn't something he got to enjoy often - two or three times at most in his entire life. And usually they were fumbled affairs, good but... Not like this, nothing like this as he moaned again, starting to move beneath her.

Eris had been waiting for that. When he was going to start to shift, move, participate in another way. And she kept it up. She kept it up until she was judging that it wouldn't be too long, when things were going to get closer to that inevitable end, and then she pulled back. She stopped, drawing in a sharp breath as she let him go, and she pushed herself up a little--or as far as he was going to let her. This was where she was going to wonder where he'd take it. Where there were so many possibilities for his reaction that she had no idea whatsoever what he might actually go with. She couldn't wait to find out.

He was almost there, almost there, god, almost there - and then suddenly she was trying to pull away. Not that she got very far, since his hand was in the way, but it was the fact that she stopped just then. She had to have done it on purpose. That little bitch - getting him all wound up and then wanting to stop, just when he was almost there. Well, he wasn't having any of that as he pushed her head back down again. If she had a problem with that, then she'd have to let him know, wouldn't she, but she wasn't getting away with pulling a stunt like that.

There was a part of her that revelled in the fact that he didn't actually let her get away. That he pushed her back down. About all that would have made it better was if he made a vocal sound of frustration. She took hold of him again, but didn't actually start. "You don't think you're done yet, do you?" she asked, giving him a hard stroke, sliding her lips over him but not quite going back to what she'd been doing. She wanted an answer, wanted to know what he'd do.

She got her groan as she touched him again and he propped himself up on an elbow, curling slightly at the waist. "You don't think you're done yet, do you?" he asked, his voice ragged, wanting.

"You want me to continue?" she asked. Last time he'd been all about getting out of her that it was what she wanted. He'd never reciprocated that sentiment, even if he'd more than proved it. But tonight, right now, she wanted to hear it. She did the same as she had just a moment ago, didn't quite stop, but didn't actually start back up again the way he was going to want her to. She was waiting, of course. She couldn't miss his answer.

He stared down his body in the darkness, a look of disbelief that she couldn't see written on his expression. "Yes, of course I fucking 'want you to continue'!" he exclaimed, wondering how the fuck that was even a question. And if she waited much longer then - god, she was killing him, she really was. Damn bitch.

That was all she wanted to hear. And her response was immediate. She'd already prepared for continuing while she waited for his answer, and then she did. It was going from just keeping his attention to exactly what she'd been up to before she stopped. He'd just have to get creative with her, or wait it out long enough. She was sure he'd come up with something. But she put her full concentration back into things, wanting to pull him right back to where he'd been, or maybe she put in even a little more effort, to make up for the fact that she'd stopped and teased for a minute. She could of course, be a teasing bitch...but she could also be one that made it worth it.

He almost cried out as she carried on - not quite, not loudly, restricting it to another groan of appreciation. He wasn't going to reward her little tricks with a cry, but that was a close run fight. He only just had the self-control to hold it back as he pushed at the back of her head, his hips starting to move, a new urgency this time, one of his own making, in case she decided to try that again.

She didn't plan to stop, but she liked the fact that he was making sure she wasn't. Just in case. Aware it wouldn't be too much longer, she pushed things as much as she could, using his motions and working with that. She made sounds, she pulled out all the stops of the little things one could do to make it just that tiny bit better. And she did in fact, know all of them. So, she put that knowledge to good use, and didn't contemplate stopping, not wanting to now. She wanted to get as much reaction from him as possible, really, before it was over.

There could have been words - there might have been words. If they were words, they weren't clear, bordering on a ramble of unintelligible sounds and guttural grunts towards the end and she pushed him there and over and he held her in place, finally giving in and dealing her a cry, his breath coming now hard and laboured.

She was pleased with the sounds he made, the almost-words but not quite. She was very happy with that. And of course, the cry out at the end. There was just something about knowing you'd had that much of an effect, and she'd had it on him. Brett, who didn't do this anyways, shied away from anything even remotely resembling intimacy, and she now had. So, she was happy with that. Eyes closed, she listened to how hard he was breathing, how uneven it sounded, and she rested her cheek against his thigh, taking a moment to appreciate that.

He took his own moment, dropping back onto the mattress, taking some time as the feelings subsided, as his breathing steadied. then taking a moment longer to go through it again, the intensity of it. It was only when he'd done that that he pushed himself up, moving himself from underneath her in a move that he knew would drop her sharply down to the mattress if she didn't move fast enough, though he caught her by the shoulder in any event and flipped her over onto her back. "Fucking tease," he told her, gruffly. "What the hell was that - what the hell were you playing at?" he thought he knew, but he wanted to hear it from her.

She didn't quite know what to expect when it was over, so she hadn't been prepared so much for him to move. Not allowing herself to be tensed for what he might do. So, she started to fall, but he then had her on her back and all. She looked up into the dark, even if she could only see where he blotted out the light from the stairs, so just a black outline of his shoulder. "Are you complaining?" she asked, instead of answering his question.

"About you stopping, what the fuck do you think?" Brett asked her. About the whole thing, he knew he didn't have any complaints - quite the opposite, in fact, but there'd been that moment... "Answer the question," he demanded of her, positioning himself very much over her, one hand by her ear, the other by her opposite waist, neither quite touching her as he held himself a few inches above her, far enough that she'd be able to feel the breath of his demands on her skin, but not actually touching her at all.

"If I'd kept up, and not stopped, everything would have been over sooner." she said. Which was the truth, with what she'd done, it postponed that end, so she could bring him back there but it took just a little longer. Like she hadn't pushed things right away either, maintaining it, drawing it out. "This way it wasn't." she said. "I also don't really want to be left to my own devices tonight. The other night I was alright with the idea of being left frustrated, but tonight? I'm not. I do want you. But most men get a little sleepy afterwards, you know." Most men didn't actually care if their lady friends were taken care of, just so long as they had their fun. She was aware in those moments that he wasn't touching her at all. She could feel him there, that heavy presence above her, but not in the physical sense. She was quiet for a few moments, and she tried pushing herself up on her elbows again, to get closer, unsure if he was going to let her. "And I wanted to hear you say it." she finished, in a soft little whisper.

"Wanted to hear me say what?" Brett asked, the other comments he had to what she'd said to him pushed out of the way for the moment in view of that.

"I wanted to hear you say 'yes'." she told him, and since he hadn't stopped her, hadn't pushed her back down, she got in close to his ear to murmur to him. She did, however keep up what he started and she didn't touch him at all, she kept it close but far enough away that there wasn't going to be an accidental contact. "That you wanted it. Me." she finished. Since he'd most certainly been preoccupied with her wanting him the other night, but hadn't said it back. So, she'd wanted to hear it. It was honest, if possibly spoke of her own personal damage. Not that them being damaged people was any huge surprised or anything.

He was waiting to see if she touched him, he'd decided. If she touched him, then he'd act. if she didn't, well, then they'd have themselves a nice little standoff, wouldn't they. "I would have thought that would have been obvious," he told her, in relation to whether he'd wanted her. It had certainly been very clear, even in the darkness she definitely hadn't missed that.

She shook her head, just a little, exhaling while she did it so he'd feel the motion without her doing anything like touching him. "Having a physical reaction to what I was doing to you has nothing to do with desire." she told him. "You wanted to hear it. The other night, you wanted to know." Even if yes, it was, in fact, obvious on her part. Especially since she'd been the aggressor there. She'd been the one who slipped up on things, who pushed things to a level that he'd initially stopped her on entirely. And sure, once he got pushed, he took over that role, but he'd been going to stop it before it even started. Insecurities weren't something she was used to, but she had them when it came to him. So, she wanted to hear it. She just wasn't going into that full explanation at the moment. If ever.

"It has everything to do with desire, Princess," he told her, disagreeing strongly with that. It did for him, anyway. "But are you happy now? Now you've made me say it?" he asked her, lowering himself a little more, to see if she'd give, or whether she'd stay were she was, touch him.

She moved when he did, keeping up that little bit of distance, half wondering if she could turn it on him. When he'd set it up to tease her--or that was her assumption--if she could frustrate him just as much with it. "Do you want me to be happy?" she asked, taking the question and turning it back on him, wondering what he'd say. She didn't know that it had everything to do with desire. Maybe in his head it did, but she wasn't sold on the idea quite yet. But she didn't push that either. Not when there was the other question to go with.

"I want you to be satisfied," Brett told her, not really answering the question, but giving her a truth. Really, the answer he gave her was referring back to something else she'd said, earlier on. It was in place of a question where he'd ask her if she really thought that he'd just leave her to her own devices like that. He'd had no intention of doing that. He could be a bastard, but he wasn't that kind of a bastard, and even with what he tended to do to her, it was important to him that she enjoyed it. It was only fun if she enjoyed it.

She laid back fully, out on the mattress beneath him, and watched the darkness. It was still only defined by his shoulder, where it blocked the light from the stairs. "It has everything to do with desire..." she mused, thinking over his wording there. She also wondered if he had a plan for her, or if so far, they were winging it, in this black inky darkness. They seemed to be good at winging it, so far. If what they'd talked about earlier was going to have even minimal chance of success, they were going to have to be fucking fabulous at it. And yet part of her thought it might actually work. That it had a possibility. She wasn't automatically discounting it. Reaching out, she almost touched him, but didn't, ghosting her fingertips almost along his arm, enough that she brushed the hair there, but nothing more than that, and only fleetingly.

"It does," he agreed, though he had to wonder why she'd said it. Of course, he didn't ask as he shifted slightly, pushing her across a little more into the centre of the mattress. Whatever, she wasn't asking him about making her happy anymore, that was the important thing. That was scary ground - he wasn't going there. "Turn over," he told her.

She did as he asked her to, and without a fight because she actually wanted to know what he was going to do, clearly he had something in mind, if he was handing out orders. Or, she supposed, he didn't quite phrase it like an order. It was more like something he said and he expected her to do it, but it wasn't a command per se. So she moved, turning her face back towards him, noting that he blocked out all the light now. She was a voice in the dark, and so was he. A presence she could feel, even if he wasn't touching her. That had happened a long time ago, though. He just...had a presence about him. You knew when Brett Trent was in the room.

He had a plan - to a certain extent anyway. To the extent that it was with certain hands that he began divesting her of the remainder of her clothes, more easily accessed with her lying on her front, stripped off one garment at a time and discarded at the side of the bed, on the floor, until she lay naked under him. he'd not touched her more than he had to to do that, but once it was done, he lay a palm flat on her side, where she curved inwards, and rolled her over until she was lying on her back. "How many men have ever told you that you're beautiful?" he asked her, figuring that the answer was somewhere in the countless multitudes. That wasn't the question he really wanted to know the answer to.

It was a strange sort of sensation, pleasant, as he did that. Took his time getting the rest of her clothes off, barely touching her in the process. She'd never been undressed quite like that before, so it was an interesting little span of moments, one that she found she appreciated in a strange way. As she lay there, rolled again, she noticed that the only place she could feel warmth was where he was touching her, in a fairly non-sexual place, and it was still nice. There was quite a contrast, after all. The question caught her slightly off guard, but she answered. "More than I can properly recall." she told him.

"And how many that you've actually given a damn about their opinion?" he asked, sliding his hand up her side and over her breast. A much more pertinent question, though he wondered if it was still the right one. He wasn't sure he knew what the right one was, or how to ask it.

The basement wasn't warm and she already had a bit of a cold creeping in. So with the warmth of his hand on her skin, and the placement of it elsewhere made her shiver, a shudder that ripped up her spine. She wanted to know what he was trying to ask her. What he was getting at, what it meant to him, but if she outright asked it wasn't going to work. Skipping ahead wasn't the game here. "None." she answered, voice soft. She didn't have to think about that. Not even for a moment.

He lowered himself down over her, mouth going to her neck, kissing hard and biting softly, but purposefully not being gentle. "Is that what you want from me?" he asked her, matching his tone to his actions as his other hand ran its way up the outside of her thigh. "Do you want me to tell you that I want you? Do you want me to tell you that you're beautiful?" Any softness, any sweet emotion was stripped from his questions by his tones and his actions and he wanted it that way. He liked her, sure. They had a plan for moving forward, sure. But this wasn't some cosy couples thing where they would curl up in front of a fire of an evening, or go out for dinner and a damn movie. This wasn't going to work like this and it was important that they both knew that.

Eris let her eyes fall shut. She couldn't see anything anyways, and it was a natural thing with the treatment he was giving her. When he asked the questions, she actually had to think about how to respond to him. Which was a little difficult to do when she was distracted, but she managed. "I want to know that you want me." she said, which was different than being told, she knew, even if that was what she'd wanted to hear at the time tonight. "And you've never told me that." Which wasn't her asking for him to either. His opinion on it would matter to her, but it wasn't exactly Brett's style, either. She didn't expect it from him, and wasn't about to start now. Just because it mattered didn't mean it was going to become a fixation, it didn't mean it was something that was going to make her lose sleep.

"You're not making sense, Princess," he told her, running his hand across the lower part of her belly and down the inside of her other thigh. "You don't believe words, but you don't think reactions can be believed either," he pointed out. "Doesn't leave very much now, does it?" he asked as his hand found its destination and he lowered his head back to her neck again.

She made a soft sound as she exhaled, still listening to him, of course, but also still distracted. So, it took her a few moments longer to formulate her response to him. She did it, it was just a bit on the slow side. "Considering what I used to do," she started, pausing a little as she pushed towards him a bit. "I know physical reactions are fakeable, or automatic, and don't necessarily have anything to do with anything." she said. "And you asked about people who'd told me in the past. Every single one of them wanted something from me. And even if they meant it, it didn't mean their specific opinion mattered." She'd put the word 'specific' in there, so he'd get the idea that maybe it wasn't a blanket thing. Maybe something else differed here.

Brett didn't want to talk about what she used to do. Especially not here and now. He started to move his hand as he straightened up against her, pushing her body down into the mattress with his own. "Fucking cynic," he told her, his face a scant inch from hers in the darkness. he could just make out her features.

She liked his weight against her. And she actually smiled when he said that. "You asked." she pointed out, though it was not with the steadiest voice she'd ever had. Not in the slightest. Pushing up against him, she reached up, sliding her hand over his shoulder, letting her nails dig in just a little at the back of it. Not a lot, just enough that he could feel it.

He took note of the sound of her voice, the unsteadiness there and he had to smile, just a little. "See," he told her, redoubling his efforts as he moved away, starting to slide down her body, occasionally stopping to kiss or bite at her skin. "I choose not to be cynical here. I figure that this means you like it," he said, punctuating the 'this' with a curl of a finger and by sucking a nipple into his mouth.

She moved a little, squirming just a touch, though not too much. She wasn't really trying to squirm away, either. She shivered again, too, both from what he was doing and the cold. "I've managed to bring out a non-cynical side of you?" she asked, again, not with exactly a steady voice. It wavered in there, and her breathing was uneven.

"Don't expect it to last," Brett warned her, in his typical 'I'm threatening here' tone as he continued down, reaching her stomach and he placed his free hand flat on her chest, holding her in place - though leaving enough leeway for her to squirm if she wanted to try. "Course, if you were faking it, it would go very badly for you," he added, though he didn't stop what he was doing at all. He wondered if she would ask, figured she would. He wasn't sure what he'd tell her if she did.

Of course she needed to ask. See what it was he'd tell her. What kinds of threats he might level in her direction. "Oh really." she said. "How's that?" she asked. "If I was faking it." Which she wasn't. She had no reason to fake it. She wasn't under any obligations to make him think that he was king of the world. She figured that he was a little on the inexperienced side, but that wasn't always a bad thing. That just meant, in theory, if they kept things up...they'd just grow in that sense together. Which wouldn't happen if she was putting on a show. And considering their plans, and the fact that she rather wanted to keep doing this with him...she was keeping it honest. She did squirm a little again though, to see how hard he'd push to keep her still.

Brett lifted his head and looked up her body into the darkness. "Don't, and you'll never have to find out," he told her. He'd hate it, he knew - he didn't know what he'd do, but he didn't have to know to know that it wouldn't be pleasant. If she cheated him like that, it would be just like anything else. He stopped as the anger sparked, just thinking about the possibility, throwing him off track, and he pushed her down into the mattress. "Just... Don't," he repeated, growling the two words.

She really probably could have been cruel and pointed out that if she was faking it? He'd never actually know. Not unless she actively told him. But she wasn't going to do that to him because she thought that might actually haunt him a little. Wondering. After all, he had massive trust issues. Massive trust issues. About like hers were, only he was more aggressive with it. She didn't want to hand over an insecurity that he might just dwell on. After all, it had taken enough just to get the man into bed in the first place. He'd initially just turned her down flat. So...no. She wasn't doing that to him. Instead, she gave him something that would likely do better for his head on the matter. "Have I ever made anything easy on you?" she asked. "Why would I start now?"

"You call that being easy on me?" Brett asked her, confrontationally. "You really think that would be easy on me?"

She of course heard the tone, and she tried propping herself up on her elbows agian, not sure that he 'd let her. "It's easier on everyone else." she said. "They can just happily go home thinking they're the best fuck in the city, and never once consider that they might have had the sex appeal of some of the homeless mole people under the city who've not seen topside for a year and a half and haven't bathed in that long either. They don't have to wonder if they could be beat out in skill by fumbling teenage virgins, not even familiar with their own anatomy let alone anyone else's." she told him, tone light, if edged beneath it. "So, sweetheart, yes, actually, I think it could be easier on you if I did something like that. And I'm not going to. I said before that if I was doing anything of this nature again, it was going to be for real reasons not anything else, and that includes putting on a show."

Brett straightened up again, coming back so that his face was level with hers. "So I'm no good then," he summarised, taking that from that. He was angry - Brett never took anything well when he was angry. Though he was approaching 'I'll fucking well show her' stage, which could be good for her.

Brett really did make no sense sometimes. She was aware of it, it happened, and it got especially nonsensical when he was angry. Which she could feel from him, it wasn't just in his voice, even if it was, very clearly. No, it was in all of him. He was a passionate man, really, all things told. When he got carried away in something he really got carried away. Unfortunately, 'angry' was about the only thing that ever sparked up that hard. But she was used to it, and last time, well, that had worked out for him. "Did I say that?" she asked, instead of telling him a flat 'no, fucking touchy idiot'.

Brett glared at her, though that was mostly lost in the darkness. She always answered a question with a fucking question when she got like this. "You didn't need to," he told her. He'd already known it was a possibility - it had been a long fucking time, after all - but still, she'd seemed like she liked it and - well, he knew she said she wouldn't lie, but... She said it was harder for him this way. Well, fine, he'd take the hard way then. Every damn time. Fucking bitch woman. He'd stopped what he'd been doing some time ago, but he hadn't actually moved his hand at all, and he started up again, doing everything he could, everything he thought that she'd like, could possibly like, working hard at it as he dipped his head down her body and finally took a taste of her.

It had kind of been a toss up in her head, what she thought he might do. If he'd stop entirely and just leave, or if he'd do what he just did. Try harder. Even if he'd been doing just fine to begin with. She did reward him a little with a moan, a shakey one at best that was accompanied with a gasp. She squirmed then, not actually anything she tried to do, she just did it. She also reached down to fist a hand in his hair, pulling a little, though not near enough to get him to stop.

Brett didn't have any intention of stopping for anything. He'd never been one to back down from a challenge and as far as he was concerned, that was exactly what this was. A challenge, a fight, and one he needed to win. So, she was going to get everything he could give her and she was going to like it. He hooked his free hand under her thigh, lifting her hips off the bed and throwing one of her legs over his shoulder to get a better angle, trying to take his cues from the noises she was making.

She bit at her lower lip, cutting off her own moans, and she did it with a grin. The movements she was making were indication enough, a lot of them purely helpless, but she did want to make him work for things. Especially if that was what he was turning it into. Plus, he hadn't made that much noise himself, and thought it was probably a control thing. Since they were always playing little control games.

He could stop, he knew. He could do to her what she'd done to him, but he wouldn't - that might be her game, but it wouldn't be his. Not tonight. Tonight she was getting exactly what she wanted, what he was sure that she wanted.

She pulled harder at his hair, let her nails dig into his scalp a little bit, less something she thought through, and more something that just happened to happen. Her eyes dropped shut and she let her head sink back as she arched her back, what he was doing getting another moan, even if she was making an attempt to curb that.

He made an effort to shake her hand from his hair as she pulled at it, wanting to know what she'd do if he tried that. Not that he could go far without totally pulling away in any event, but he didn't want to. Like he didn't actually mind the hand in his hair in the first place. And he appreciated the moan - he wasn't getting enough of those, but their lack meant that he made all the more effort, trying every trick he knew and a good few that he didn't know and was working on making up on the spot.

She swatted him was the response to him shaking her hand off, or trying to. There was a sharp smack to his shoulder and then she was back to it, fingers threading into his hair and pulling tighter than before. And, considering he was being creative, he managed to hit something that had her letting out an involuntary cry, one that wasn't in the slightest bit steady, and she shuddered again, thinking she might need to push him into this sort of thing more often, if he put that much effort in to prove her wrong. But then Brett always had something to prove. He just needed the challenge to be presented. She could work with that.

He smiled into her at that, raking his nails across the small of her back, but he didn't try and fight her off again. He loved the cry - clearly he was doing something right. He tried to pinpoint exactly what it was that had garnered that reaction, tried to replicate it. He thought he could narrow it down to two or three things, so he tried them all in order, paying careful attention to her reactions.

She arched her back more when he scratched her, and she latched her free hand's nails into his shoulder. One of them was blunter than the others, considering she'd broken it off last time they were together. But there was always enough nail to dig in. He also did it again, hit that right spot, where it seemed like it sent electricity through her system, and there was another sharp cry that shot through the dark.

There. He caught what it was that time, what she liked so much, and so he focused on that, pulling her closer to him as he felt her nails dig into his shoulder. The hand that had been holding her down before slid down her body now, to join the other in the small of her back, to lift her off the bed a little more, angling her upwards.

She pushed her heel against the middle of his back. Her nails were dug into his skin hard enough that she thought she'd be leaving little half-moon cuts in their wake. She liked that idea, though. And it wouldn't be anywhere visible, so he wouldn't be able to complain to her that she was breaking his newly set rules. Or, in her head, that's what it meant. Either way she wasn't actually giving much thought to it, as she was distracted. So very, very distracted. Her breathing was getting more and more ragged, and with what he was doing it wasn't going to take very long before she crested.

He pushed back against her hand slightly as she did that, knowing she'd mark him if she carried on, but not minding so much that. At least it wasn't his neck where he would have to answer more awkward questions. And anyway, she felt and sounded very much like she was losing control, which meant he was winning here. He wasn't going to stop her doing anything that added to that for her.

When he pushed back that slight bit she dug her nails in harder, taking him back, even if it was just a tiny thing. He wasn't allowed to move back. And if that meant she had to drag him back in by her nails she'd do that. Only now definitely there'd be cuts there. She wouldn't claim blame. Beyond that, however, she hit hard, with a sharp cry that was louder than the others had been. It seemed to almost hit out of nowhere, rushing up on her so fast. She also couldn't actually manage to stay still while it happened, shudders going through her. Then she relaxed back, having to get her breath back, which was going to take a minute.

He gave her a minute - hell, he was half tempted to just carry on, see what that would bring, see what he could really get out of her, but in the end he didn't, straightening up a little - as far as he could with her still holding him there, at least. He gave it an attempt.

She smiled, drawing in a deep, deep breath and she let it out in a rush--not letting him up til she was done with that. Then she extracted her fingernails from his skin, and let go of his hair--though she did that by threading her fingers through it like she'd merely been interrupted in the gesture in the first place, instead of her having reached down and grabbed as hard as she could. She kept taking deep breaths, letting them out, slowing herself down...though she didn't actually try that hard. It was a pleasant little afterglow, really.

Brett rolled his shoulders and shook his head to unruffle his hair as she let him go and he sat back, kneeling up as he let her properly back down to the mattress. He didn't say anything, just waited for her to be done, being done, or whatever. he wasn't exactly sure what came next. Last time, as soon as they were over, he'd been fighting the urge to just run. He didn't have that this time, but that didn't mean he knew where things went now. As long as she didn't get all snuggly on them, they'd be fine.

She stretched after a moment, then curled up on her side, much like she had last time, back to him. He wasn't actually the only one who didn't quite know what came next. She really needed to stop and think about everything, what she was doing with him, where that fit in with...everything. The new ideas that they'd tossed around, if they were anything more than just a mental exercise. Part of her thought he was serious. Part of her wondered if it wasn't just his way of getting her to agree not to do something catestrophic. She should know. Back in the day, she would have. But now? Here? She didn't, and it was something that was going to eat at her, a little at a time.

She really probably needed to figure this all the fuck out. Maybe where there was an...arrangement. Just an arrangement that they didn't actually discuss, because that would mean that it might need some sort of a label, which she didn't think either of them would be okay with. She could barely hint at the reality that she cared about him, she was not in any kind of position to be starting to call herself anything resembling a significant other. Unless it was his mistress. ...and that was purely for show. This is going to get very fucking complicated, very fucking quickly. she thought. Or, maybe not. But somehow she didn't imagine she and Brett could work anything out the 'easy' way. "Are you going to lie back down? Or let me freeze?" she asked, tone light, a little unreadable. The basement was cold though. She already had goosebumps again, so she could use the body heat.

He paused for a moment, then reached behind him and grabbed the blankets that he'd heaped in a corner, before lying down and covering the both. He lay on his back, an arm under his head as he stared up into the darkness. "You gonna be able to find this place again, or do I need to be looking at other ways of getting in contact?" he asked her, moving right on straight away from what had just gone on.

Eris thought about it for a few long moments, shifting back a little til she was touching him, but not turning around. Instead, she kept her eyes out on the dark that surrounded them. "How will I know you when you'd want to meet up in general?" she asked. Since she didn't actually know when he did. Obviously he worked something out here, but she wasn't quite sure what the reasons were. "I'd need to know that first. Then I'd have to worry about remembering how to get here. ...honestly, I probably won't. I didn't even recognize it til I went around back, where we left." she admitted. While she hated admitting that kind of thing, it was him. The only person who knew anyways, and he never gave her hell about it. Not once. He'd never used that to hurt her, even if he dredged up every other tactic in the book.

"I don't know," he admitted to her. "I don't have a better plan. We needed a place that wasn't going to be watched - this was what I came up with. Jackson's got his eye on both your place and mine. I wanted a place I could go to ground if I needed to, if the shit really hit." With her limitations, it was far from perfect, but they really didn't have a whole lot of options right now. less than the few they normally had.

She sighed, and rolled over onto her stomach, still keeping herself against him but not cuddled. She curled her own arms beneath her chin and rested it there, tilting her head til she was looking at what the vague light showed of him. The contours of his person. Did it not occur to you that you could just cut ties with me and not have to worry about it? she thought, but didn't say. She didn't especially want him to take that course of action, after all. Not really. Even if she understood it was probably in his best interest. She still didn't want to be alone, and with him...she wasn't. She didn't feel alone. Odd, considering the company, likely, but she didn't imagine anything they did quite lined up with anything resembling sense. "If you wanted someplace he'd not find you, what you'd really need is an upscale hotel room." she said. "He'd be chasing his tail scouring the gutters, and never find you."

He turned his head so that he was looking at her. "Which is all fine and dandy and all if you can afford the bill for an upscale hotel. And if you wouldn't get your employers knocking on your door wanting to know what the fucking hell you were playing at - especially since the obvious contender for 'upscale hotel' is owned by the competition." Which Brett knew now. He hadn't known, not really, the day that he'd been 'summoned' to the Drake. Though, at the time, he would have put it that he'd been asked to attend. That had been before that meeting. Before the first offer of recruitment. Funny how, once they'd actually got him to fall, he'd ended up working for the other side. Or maybe not funny at all.

"Hush." she said. "I know you can't afford it, and you wouldn't take my money to float you for a bit either." she said. Not that she'd be able to do so for long, but he'd have a little leeway. But she knew better than to offer. "It's just mentality I'm talking about. He'd be expecting you someplace like this. The best way to hide is to be someplace he won't expect you. Though, really, this does bring up the question." she said. "...if you weren't just talking back there, just shooting ideas around to talk...what are you going to tell him?" she asked. "And if anything actually goes through on it, he's going to know about our involvement." she added. She smiled, though it wasn't necessarily a pleasant one. "Something tells me he isn't going to approve."

"Jackson won't look for me here either," Brett told her. He knew the guy, after all. "He wouldn't be able to picture me in an abandoned building. He'd probably think I was above that. After all, he thinks I could go back, so..." So the guy really didn't have any idea when it came to Brett. Not of the reality. "Hell, he'd probably find it easier to picture me in an upmarket hotel. And, for now, I'm not gonna tell him anything, if I can avoid it. He definitely doesn't get to know what I told you today. He wouldn't be able to handle that. If he finds out about you? Sure, he'll not approve and he can bitch all her likes - but if he found out about that? He'd go off on some fucking crusade and... bad things would follow. Relly fucking bad things."

She nodded. She could well imagine, really, so she got why they were just not going to tell him. "Well, you know he won't hear anything from me." Then she stopped. "...no one will hear anything from me." she added. Exhaling in a sigh, she propped herself up on her elbows, to gaze down at him. "I suppose my next step is trying to make sure he doesn't get me killed. And himself, while he's at it. Though I can only hope, really. He doesn't seem to be of a mind that he listens to my kind." she said. "I'm under the distinct impression that he doesn't in any way understand just what kind of a threat he's posing."

"He won't," Brett agreed. "He can be fucking black and white like that - you're the bad guy. And you've not stopped being the bad guy for long enough to qualify as a 'reformed bad guy'. Me? I was a good guy, and he hasn't known about my shit for long enough for me to go from 'fallen and rescueable good guy' into the 'bad guy' pile. I don't know which of us would have a harder time crossing over," he mused, thinking about that one. It was a toss up, really.

Eris hummed. "I do." she said. "If he's as naive as he seems, and he's as black and white as you say, along with the idea that he was suggesting you go back to your old job? Sweetheart, it is going to take freight trains of evidence to get him to view you differently. He seems like he's just a believer, and he believes in you. So...I think I'd have a better chance than a snowball in hell than you would for falling in his eyes." Then she paused. "...about the only thing I can think of that might bother him enough would be knowing that you spend your time with me, and on a voluntary basis and everything." she said. "But even then? How much do you want to bet that he blames me?" she asked. "It'd probably be easy for him. Hell, he might even be relieved to have someone to pin it all on."

"I can handle Jackson," Brett told her, confidently. The guy needed a wake up call anyhow, so he'd be getting one sooner or later. He couldn't go through life only seeing things the way he wanted them to be. "Don't worry about it. We were talking about keeping in contact," he reminded her, returning them to the original subject. That was more of an immediate issue than the cop anyhow.

"I liked the flowers." she said. "They were nice, even if it was just a means to an end." Since she was under no illusions that Brett had actually bought her flowers. He was about the polar opposite of 'sentimental'. So, getting them, she hadn't thought at all that it was anything she should read into. "Anonymous, and no one's the wiser, not even the deliverer." She'd thought it worked. It had been especially intelligent of him, even. Which was again, something that most people didn't give him credit for, but she knew he had.

"They do so many deliveries, they wouldn't remember who ordered what." He would have preferred to order them over the phone - he knew that the store took phone orders, but you had to set up an account with them to do that, so he'd gone in and done it in person, and trusted to being another anonymous man sending flowers to his honey. "Only works one way though - you start getting shit delivered to my place and you know at least Ginger's gonna wanna know what's going on."

"Yes, but I could just call Ginger and ask her to get a message to you if you aren't there." Eris pointed out. "She'd do it, I'm sure." Then she paused. "Just play nice with her." she added. "You can be pretty imposing, I'm sure you've noticed. Though she's been quite interested in our love life." Her tone was mildly amused there. She also reached out and brushed her fingers against his shoulder.

"Yeah, well, she's a nosy bitch," Brett shot back, but the comment lacked the true bite that usually accompanied Brett's derisory statements. In truth, he didn't mind Ginger so much - he wouldn't go as far as to say that he liked her, he very much held that he didn't like anyone. And that belief was held even though he was naked in bed with a woman right now. But he'd always felt a little sorry for Ginger, with her two kids in that shitty apartment. She deserved much better out of her life. You couldn't hate someone like that - it took too much effort, even for Brett, who didn't do pity.

"I think she just liked thinking that even someone like you could find someone." Eris said, tone light. Thoughtful. "But either way, I could get her to give you a message." Which had been the point. She trailed her fingers along his shoulder, paying attention to him while she was doing it. While it was probably a little self destructive, she was thinking about everything and the more she did, the less she thought it was actually a workable scenario. Certain things would ride on him, and she wasn't at all positive he would be able to pull it off. And that was beside the fact that she didn't trust herself to be able to do it anymore either.

"Okay, well, well stick with that then," Brett agreed, aware of her touch on his skin and not mentioning it, not yet. Not unless she kept going, unless she reached his scars. he'd made her touch them last time, and she couldn't see them here, but he was still selfconscious of them, would still have issues with her exploring them, feeling them. He made no mention, either of the comment in regards to 'finding someone' - he doubted this was quite what Ginger would have had in mind.

She kept up the motion, keeping it light, very slow. She also fell into silence as her mind worked over things. Turned everything around, tried to see all the angles. Tried to see where the weak spots were. There just happened to be quite a few of them, and that was never good. Questions rose up in the back of her mind, as well, but she didn't ask them. Not yet. For the moment she held her tongue, letting everything quiet down, only really hearing their breathing in the dark.

He shifted slightly, settling more down on the mattress, still lying on his back, still with one hand behind his head, the other splayed loosely across his belly. He made no effort to touch her, though she was touching him. He felt no drive towards intimacy - towards the softer emotions that got resolutely rejected, or channeled into anger, which he could deal with. The negative emotions were the only ones that could get through his cracked and broken psyche these days.

She still said nothing, though her fingers stilled when he moved. He didn't actively try to stop her, but she took the shift in position as an indication he was uncomfortable. So she stopped, then withdrew her hand. Pushing herself up, she sat on the mattress, and glanced around, as if looking for her clothes was going to magically make them visible to her...which really didn't happen, what with the near pitch black of it all.

He was a little surprised when she got up and he followed her, half way at least, propping himself up on an elbow and reaching out to place a hand on her hip. "You going somewhere?" he asked her - not the same kind of challenging 'oh no the fuck you're not' tone he'd used last time, but an actual question this time.

She glanced partially over her shoulder at him, mildly surprised at the touch to her hip. "I don't know." she answered him honestly. She might be. She felt a little like she wanted to take a walk even if she knew that was inadviseable at best. The questions she still had on her mind were prominent, right there in her head, even if they were a bit of a mess. Still, she didn't actually raise any of them, unsure she even wanted to.

"Can you find your way home?" he asked. He was staying, he knew that. He'd made that decision before he even knew whether she'd turn up or not. As much as he'd entertained the idea that he could go home, that Jackson wasn't going to be watching, if there as ever a night that the guy would be watching the address Brett had given him, it would be tonight. Safer to just stay here, even if it was fucking freezing. But that didn't mean she had to stay, if she chose to leave.

"No." she answered, being honest. She couldn't. She was quiet for another long moment. "I can't find my way anywhere. Jakob dropped me off at the park...took me hours to find my way back to the One More Round." she said. "And I knew it was right there, I knew it had to be there. But I couldn't find it." Her tone was light, quieter than usual. The inflection was off, though it was difficult to tell how.

The park was large, he knew, she could have been dropped off anywhere, but he also knew she'd been lost yards from her place before. He'd seen it. He knew how deep her problems ran. "You got money for a cab?" he asked instead of acknowledging anything like that. If their plan worked, she'd never have to find her way anywhere anyway. It'd be his role to fill in the gaps, step in for the things she lacked. And that was just for starters. If they were going to make this work, if they were going to keep her secrets and make this work to keep themselves both alive, he was going to have to learn how to play the game, her game.

"Find someone else." came out of her mouth, and she move, reaching down to take his hand and put it down on the mattress, and she went to stand up, feeling an internal rise of a whole lot of things she didn't especially want to deal with right this second. This of course, was one of the other horrid things about the brain damage she'd been hit with. She didn't have control over emotions or expression of them. Before, she'd barely had them period, and if she was feeling any particular way, it was entirely incidental. It didn't matter in the slightest, because she could just make people think she was feeling however she wanted them to think. That wasn't the case anymore. Now, sometimes she got overwhelmed, and sometimes it was at times like this, where she didn't even think it was appropriate.

"'Find someone else'?" Brett shot right back at her, sounding a little confused, with an edge for if she meant what he thought she meant. he stood up behind her, feeling the cold of the floor beneath his feet. "What the fuck is that meant to mean?" he asked.

She looked around, really wishing there was a little more light at the moment, and then she just made a move for the stairs. Her dress was over there. She could see it on the stair. "You know what I mean." she told him, thinking he really did. The edge in his tone told her that much. "You can have the girls, I'll set it up, I'll get you started but find someone else." she told him, having a very hard bout of 'must leave'. Like now. Ten minutes ago.

He didn't follow her, watching her emerge towards the light. She was fucking doing it again, wasn't she? She was just going to fucking walk out, leave him. After all this, she was just going to go. And not go in that good 'she doesn't want to stay the night, which means no messy waking up together tomorrow morning, phew' kind of a way. No, this was going in a much more fucking final way, just when he'd thought that they'd begun to get things sorted. "I don't want your fucking girls," he told her, that edge blossoming into real anger. What the fuck did she think she was playing at anyhow? "I don't want your girls, and I don't want your set up and don't do me any fucking favours."

She grabbed up her dress, and started pulling it back on. She didn't say anything further. She wanted to tell him that it was a good idea he'd had. That it was solid, and it would work, and he'd be fine, and all that. Or, the plan was sound so long as it didn't rely on her. or, to roll that out a little further, them. Maybe she was overreacting--no, scratch that, she felt like she was overreacting, but she couldn't actually help it. When she got her dress up over her shoulders, she could smell the perfume she'd put on for him. Which really just fueled everything all the more.

He watched her start to get dressed and reached down, finding her underwear on the floor and balling it up before he threw it at her. "Don't forget these. You keep leaving them places - wouldn't want you to fucking run out," he spat. Bitch. Fucking bitch. She was just going to fucking leave him, walk out, crash fucking everything. Fucking, fucking bitch.

She felt the clothes he threw at her hit her back, not that it hurt or anything. One would have to try a hell of a lot harder to harm someone with thrown undergarments. "I'd hate to remind you I was here." she said, not thinking about what she was saying at all, just coming out with what ran through her mind as it did so, and she bent to snatch them up off of the floor, before she started up the stairs.

"I'll do my best to forget," he called after her, grabbing his pants and pulling them on. It was too fucking freezing in here not to, especially now. That's what he told himself. He wasn't going to go after her. The fucking bitch wanted to walk out, then she could walk out. She could do whatever the hell she wanted - she always did do anyhow, so why the hell should now be any different? She could walk out and he'd just... carry on with his life, or the joke that was his life. nothing would change. Because he wasn't going to do this on his own. They had a fucking plan. Sure, there were no guarantees, it would have been hard - but it had been a plan. It had potential. She'd been going to go for it. But now? No - she and her mile wide fucking masochistic streak was going to shit all over that. And he really had no way out.

She might have said something back. Something along the lines of 'I'm sure it won't be difficult for you' or whatever, but she didn't. She just got to the top of the steps, remembered she had left her shoes...somewhere else and she had no idea where, but she wasn't stopping for them. She might just start getting into things, and she didn't want to do that, and maybe this way he'd just...do whatever. And she'd do her thing, and eventually he'd be clear. And she'd...well, whatever. Be dead? Probably. But she wouldn't be letting him down and getting into something she wasn't capable of doing and she wouldn't be entertaining some fairy story that he probably didn't even want to do anyways, and he was just saying it all because he didn't like her headspace. It was safer for him to not have anything to do with her anyways, now wasn't it. Yes, it was. And when that crushing sense of loss hit her she'd just remind herself of that. And...get things done faster. Sure. Right. Whatever. She started through the house, but couldn't find the exit right away, because well--he'd done a good job of boarding it all up.

He pulled his shirt on as she disappeared from view, ripping a couple of buttons off as he yanked it over his head roughly. She'd gone - she'd actually fucking properly gone and done it. Again. She'd left him. Again. Only this time it was fucking worse because there'd been something there. he took a few steps away from the mattress and tripped over one of her shoes, landing on the heel which jabbed up into the sole of his foot. He let out a shout of pain, that turned into an exclamation of pure anger and frustration as he turned and did exactly what he'd done last time he'd found she'd left him - he tried to take it all out on the wall, swinging his right fist into the brickwork of the basement as hard as he could. Which wasn't a good plan, given that the brick was pretty damn solid. "Fuck!" the shout ripped through the basement on the heels of the slam of flesh against wall as he cradled his fist to his chest, feeling the blood on his knuckles. He really should have learned from the last time - punching walls fucking hurt.

She could have ignored the first shout. It could be chalked up to frustration and anger, which she was used to, coming from him and she knew she'd just massively pissed him off. The second one was harder. Eris had even managed to find the kitchen, the window she'd climbed in at leveling a breeze across her form, making her shiver violently. She blinked, her eyes having misted a little in her search for a way out. She could keep going. Even if she turned around right now and asked him if he was okay, she knew all she'd get was a whole lot of anger from him. He wouldn't answer her. Hell. Worse things might happen. leave, leave, leave...

But in the end, she did actually care about him. She had massive amounts of trouble owning up to that, or acknowledging it to herself, but she did. It was part of why she was trying to get out now. Before anything happened...or, anything more than what already had, which she didn't think was anything to him anyways. Still, though. It all scared her. It scared her bad. Going through with selling herself out and getting him out wasn't frightening for her. That she could deal with without issue. But the idea of moving forward? Of actually trying to see this through? That, as it was sinking in, was blindingly terrifying. And she couldn't do it, and it would make everything worse and it'd be a huge mess. It would mean that he'd be left possibly in a worse position than he was now. Who knew.

And that had nothing to do with what she'd heard from downstairs, or that she only stood there for about ten seconds before she turned to head back. It felt like a lot longer. Could've been hours, for what it felt like. But it wasn't. It was pretty damn quick, all things considered, and she was back at the top of the stairs, looking down, seeing her shadow stretch down the steps. "Did you hurt yourself?" she asked. Her voice was off. There was no real way to put it, it was just 'off'. Not loud, enough that he'd hear her.

"Fuck you!" Brett called up the stairs, turning away from the door as he still cradled his hand, his face screwed up in pain. He didn't think he'd broken it, but damn if it didn't hurt like hell. His knuckles throbbed steadily in the darkness, and the pain had brought tears to his eyes for a moment or two. And it was all her fucking fault. All of it. She was to blame and she could just fuck off and leave him alone to his pain.

That was about what she'd expected. She looked for a light, though a second later figured that was probably stupid, there probably wasn't any electricity turned on. So she started down the steps, entirely unsure what was going to happen to her for doing so. "Answer me." she said, once she was about halfway down.

"You forgot your damn shoes," Brett snapped at her, picking up the shoe he'd trodden on with his left hand and launching it at the bottom of the stairs, pissed off, but still not throwing it anywhere it could actually threaten to hit her. He would have had the other one join it, but he didn't know where it was.

She walked down a few more steps. "You missed. And you still haven't answered the fucking question." she continued, looking in the direction she'd heard him. Which she was betting was answer enough in itself. It meant 'yes, I hurt myself I'm just not telling you you evil evil bitch'. Or some approximation thereof.

"You think I was fucking aiming at you? Don't flatter yourself, doll," Brett told her, moving further into the basement, away from the stairs. He experimentally flexed his fingers - he had full movement, but damn was it painful. He really wanted to get out into the light, have a look at the damage, but that would mean going past her, and right now, he wasn't going to give her the satisfaction. And anyway... "Why the fuck are you still here? Weren't you leaving?" he asked her, his tone bitterly dismissive.

"Well, you did throw something in my general direction like a toddler, yes." she said. She got down to the basement, the floor just as cold as it had been a second ago. "Come here." she said, her tone suggesting that she wasn't going to just leave. And she didn't expect him to listen to her, but they could both play the stubborn card and it would be a waiting game after that. She was fairly certain he would be just as aware of that as she was.

"Doesn't mean I fucking missed," Brett told her. For a start, if he'd been throwing the shoe at her, it would have hit her. And for another thing - did she really think he'd do that kind of thing? Well, yes, clearly she did. Clearly she thought he would do. Since she'd said that. "So go, why the hell are you still here? Because of this?" he gestured with his right hand in the darkness, feeling the blood drip down to his wrist, some little drops spattering off into the dark as he did it. "You don't need to bother - I've gotta find someone else, right?" he shot back at her.

"Come. Here." Eris said, words tight, controlled. "Do you really want to deal with whatever you just did in the dark all fucking night because you're stubborn?" she asked, ignoring everything else he said. At least one thing had happened, though. She was feeling slightly more stable. Not a whole lot, but slightly. Being pissy with him helped, in it's fucked up little way.

"No - I want you to fuck off like you were just fucking determined to do and leave me the fuck alone. Go on, run the fuck away," he told her, though he at least turned to face her and glared at her. She wouldn't be able to see him, but he could see her, outlined in the light coming from down the stairs. He'd thought things were getting somewhere, but of course they hadn't been. This was his. fucking. life. Things never got any better. He'd trusted her, he'd actually started to really trust her and she just went and pissed all over that. Why should he evern be fucking surprised?

"If that's what you want me to do, then why the fuck are you so pissed off right now?" Eris snapped. "Why the fuck are you behaving like this--" she stopped short, and looked away for a moment, then back."You know what the really fucking pathetic thing is here, Trent?" she asked, though it was clearly rhetorical. "You're just going to stand back and play victim. Again. Did it never fucking once occur to you to even ask me why? What might be wrong, or what was going on, or anything?" she snapped, and if she could see the shoe he'd thrown in her direction she'd have thrown it right back at him. "No, you're just going to stand there in the fucking dark, all fucking wounded, and lash out at me because you're an insensitive fucking dick who can't even be bothered to ask the simplest fucking question, instead you just want to--to---" she let out a frustrated sound, lashing out herself--though hers was quite a bit less destructive than his was, it was just balling her fist up and knocking the side of it against the rail, which part of it came loose, clattering to the floor then off over the side of the steps someplace. "This is going to be the same as when I left before, isn't it? You're just going to decide whatever the fuck you want, and that's it, end of story, nevermind you never once thought maybe you could find out, and even when I told you, you couldn't believe me, because you decided and poor fucking you. The world's against you, right? Why not me too."

That got him out of the dark as he strode forward, kicking the shoe out of the way and stopping at the bottom of the stairs. He looked a mess - his hair was dishevelled from where she'd been pulling at it before, his shirt was buttonless down to midchest where he'd pulled it on and ripped off several buttons. He was so angry with her right now that he hadn't even connected that that meant that a hell of a lot more of his burn scar than he ever allowed under normal circumstances was on display, licking up the left side of his chest and up onto his neck. The shirt itself was untucked, though it was clear that whilst he'd zipped up the pants he'd pulled on, he'd not buttoned them and the belt was lose, meaning they sat slightly lower on his body, the cuffs of the pants dragging on the floor slightly and partially obscuring his bare feet.

His right hand was cradled once again, palm up, in a loose fist against his stomach, and it was clear it was actively bleeding. The punch to the wall had taken the skin and some of the flesh off his knuckles and the blood had slowly run down his hand to his wrist, as well as spattering across his white shirt.

"Ask you why you left?" he stated, confrontationally, his tone slightly louder than normal, clearly angry, but far from a shout, "You want me to ask why you left? Darling - it's fucking clear why you were leaving. You don't think you can fucking do it. You think that fucking brain of yours is good for fucking nothing and you'd prefer to crawl back into a fucking hole and wait to fucking die than risk finding out you might be right. Because you've got some damn insane death wish that you're just dressing up as some fucking altruistic fucking bullshit to make yourself feel better. You'd prefer to die than to even try and live your fucking life. So don't turn that 'poor fucking you' bullshit on me when you're playing exactly the same damn tune."

He had a lot of it right, but not all of it. "And if I can't, if I fuck up, if I can't do this--which I think we both know I can't--what the fuck good would it do to get you out from under, only to wind up in that position? And trust me when the wolves circle, it won't be pretty. You'll be just as fucked as you are now." she said, reaching out to take his hand, because he was bleeding. ..really bleeding, from the rivers of blood sliding off of him. She noticed the scars too, just at the moment, they were secondary to everything else. "Your problem is you think you know everything, and you don't. There are pretty vital fucking pieces missing. You just don't care." she snapped. "You want to sell it to yourself so you can pile one more person on that's fucked you over, so you can justify yourself."

"If I end up just as fucked as I am now, then I've not lost anything," Brett pointed out, making a token attempt to avoid her getting at his hand, but then giving up. "And if I didn't think you could fucking do it, I wouldn't have suggested it in the first place. You just don't want to even fucking try. But go on - fill in these missing damn pieces for me."

"There a reason I should?" she asked, though her attention was down on his hand, since yes, when he tried to get it away from her she didn't go for that and thankfully he stopped trying after a few moments. She looked it over, turning more towards the light and pulling his arm a little with her--though she was careful not to do anything that would cause his hand more pain. She leaned closer, and frowned at it. Well it really needed to be cleaned and bandaged, and he was going to need to be careful with it. She slid her hand beneath his, grasping really lightly. "Squeeze my hand." she said, wanting to know what kind of strength he had in it, wondering if he snapped any bones. That would be bad.

Brett squeezed her hand, as hard as he could which, whilst it wasn't as hard as he would normally be able to (which would have really hurt her), was pretty firmly. Hurt like hell to do it, of course, but he tried not to let that show in his face. "Why? Because I'm apparently missing something and the fact that you saw fit to throw that in my damn face says to me you want me to know what it is. So, go on then, sweetheart, spill."

"I wanted you to know that you're an asshole, who only thinks of himself, and every once in a while, you might do well to do something easy like ask a simple fucking question. I know you got out of the habit since you got your new job and all, but there's still basic human interaction to observe." she said. "Is the water on here?" she asked, still not looking up at him, and she had started to tug a little at the hem of her dress. Being she didn't own anything expensive anymore, it wasn't that difficult to get a strip of it off, and she rapped it around his knuckles to put pressure on the wounds, wanting to slow the bleeding at least.

"I don't know whether the water's still on and I asked you what you meant when you told me to find someone else," Brett pointed out, not giving a damn about the water, or about his fist. "And you told me I knew what you meant. So screw you - I asked a question and you completely blew me off. Doesn't fucking inspire a guy to ask any more. And if you want to leave, I'm not gonna follow you around and beg you to fucking stay and if you don't get that about me yet, darling, then you're never going to."

"You did know what I meant." she said. Because he'd laid it out for her and all. There was just more in her head about it. "And you just flipped straight to 'well fuck you then'." she said, then she started up the stairs though she still had hold of his hand, so he was going to have to come with her, or yank her back. "I know you won't follow me. I didn't ask you to." she said. She'd figured he was gone every step of the way, that hadn't actually changed. Or, maybe it had started to, and that was scary too.

He followed her, because pulling her back with his injured hand in no way seemed like a good plan, so he followed her, stepping up off the cold basement floor and following her up into the partial light of the main building, the sounds of the night muffled behind the boarded up windows. "Then tell me what I was damn well meant to ask? If I already knew that the fuck you were doing? Fill me in here, sweetheart, cos I'm just a selfish dumb fuck who doesn't have a clue. Enlighten me."

She got them to the kitchen, which was thankfully close to the basement door which meant she didn't have to hunt too hard, plus she'd just been up there. She turned on the tap, waiting to see if there was water. And, weirdly enough, there was. It wasn't clean at first, though, so she let it run. "Why. Maybe ask from my point of view what the problem is, instead of just your version. You know me, but you don't know everything about me. Or...whatever, it doesn't matter." she said, adjusting the taps so the water would run warmer than it was.

Brett stared down at her, still pissed with this entire situation. Pissed and in pain, his hand throbbing hard still, one feeding the other. Pissiness and pain intermingling and sustaining each other. "Fine: what's your problem?" he demanded of her.

She didn't answer him, instead holding her fingers under the tap again, and she judged that it was okay. Then she took his hand again and held it under the water, not removing the strip of cloth she'd put over his knuckles straight away, mostly she just rubbed at his skin, getting blood off of it. "Why did you hit the wall?" she asked, after a long, long moment. She was reminded of cleaning his hand up when he'd tracked her down, and vaguely wondered if it was the same thing. He occasionally had problems with walls. Or, more, he had a temper, and now and again it snapped.

He hissed as the water hit his hand and the breaks in his skin sung with a sharp and biting pain. Involuntarily, he tried to jerk his hand away before he stopped and made himself keep it there as she prodded at it. "I... trod on your shoe," he told her, mulishly.

She nodded a little, though it was more to herself than anything. That had been the first sound she'd heard then. "I recommend kicking the shoe next time." she told him, voice light. She got as much of the blood off of him as she could, and then she pulled his hand back out from beneath the tap, gently pulling the cloth off of it so she could reassess. It was definitely going to need better wrapping than she had there, and she'd need to clean it out better. She didn't imagine anything on the walls in a place like this would be good to have ground into a wound. She also highly doubted that he'd go to the hospital. Which left her. Well, it wasn't the first time. "This'll hurt." she warned lightly before she put his hand back under the water, though she adjusted the flow of it so it wasn't as hard before she did so. She could be gentle when she wanted to be.

It did, in fact, hurt and Brett gritted his teeth against the pain. "Yeah, well, with those fucking heels you wear, I probably would have done more fucking damage if I'd done that," he mumbled. The shoe hadn't been the reason, it had just been the last straw, and he'd needed to lash out at something. The wall had just been the nearest thing that he could hit.

"Did you hurt your foot?" she asked. She didn't think he'd been limping when he'd come over, but then again, he'd been pretty pissed off, so that fast stride probably wouldn't have shown it anyways. This was definitely more pressing. She got it as good as she was going to, then glanced around and rolled her eyes. It wasn't as if there was going to be anything to dry his hand with so she gathered the skirt of her dress up to do it. Then she tore another strip free, though this time it was a longer one, so she could wrap his hand a couple of times with it before she tied it off.

It occurred to Brett that her clothing wasn't having a great time surviving their encounters lately, but he was still being pissy at her, so he kept that observation to himself. "My foot's fine," he told her. It had hurt for a few minutes when he'd first stepped on her shoe, but the pain in his hand had been so overwhelming that he hadn't even noticed when his foot had stopped hurting and it didn't anymore.

"You shouldn't stay here, if the temperature drops too low, you'll freeze. And you need this looked at by someone with better skills than mine." she added, letting his hand go and she stepped back away from him. She was aware he'd asked the question and she'd ignored it. She couldn't decide if it was because it was too little, too late, or if it was because she still wasn't even sure what she'd say, or if she trusted herself to say anything at all. What she did do was look away, even if she'd not even remotely made eye contact since she'd first taken his hand downstairs.

He took his hand back and turned away from her. "I'll take care of it," he told her, walking across the room. It hadn't escaped his notice that she hadn't answered his question, and, really, it proved his point - that there was no fucking point. She berated him for not asking questions, but when he did, he didn't get straight answers, so he couldn't win either way. Which he figured was just how she wanted it to be. Well, she could have it however she wanted somewhere else, he wasn't going to stop her, and she wasn't going to stay.

She was quiet for a long time. She didn't move, even if she knew she should leave. He'd said he wouldn't follow, she believed him. It'd be over, on her own terms...sort of, and it'd be better off for him in the long run. Or possibly the short run too, who knew. All she did was piss him off anyways, right? That was her hidden talent. So, maybe it just...would work better that way. It would be fine, or...something. She didn't know. Nothing felt especially fine. Her eyes were on him but not entirely, mostly towards his lower back as she waited for him to walk away.

He stopped, at the other side of the room. if she was going to leave, she'd have to walk out on him. he wasn't going to do that for her. he wouldn't give her the satisfaction. He'd said he wouldn't stop her, but damnit - he didn't want her to go. He wanted to stick to the plan that they'd formed together. He wanted to give that a shot. It was a fucking ray of fucking light in his miserable damn existence and he didn't care whether it panned out or not, he wanted to try. But he couldn't force her along that road, and if she wanted out, he'd let her and nothing at all would change. What would be would be. He didn't want to do this with anyone else. He wanted to do this with her. So, if she wanted out, she was going to ahve to get out, she was going to have to leave. He wasn't going to stop her, but he wouldn't be the one to walk away from this either.

The silence stretched out for a few long moments, or they felt long to Eris. They felt like a million years. Eventually, she spoke, and when she did, her tone was unreadable again. Distant. "You need her, for this. For what you want, you'd need her and I'm not her anymore. I can't do it. And it was nice to think about for a little while," even if 'little while' had added up to what, an hour? "But the more I think about it, the more I just...know I can't. I was lost for hours. And I was right there. When I came up here? I couldn't remember where the window was. I didn't even recognize the house. So much just slips by me now. It's--" she stopped then, a little emotion creeping into her tone, and so she stopped herself, until she could edit it back out. That took almost a full minute. "Staggering." she landed on. "I don't even know where the holes are until I trip over them. I don't even know what I'm missing until it's just not there."

"So you're just going to give up before we even start?" Brett asked her, still facing away from her. "Before we even find out if I can fill those gaps? You called me a selfish bastard, but you're thinking about you and just you in this as well. You're thinking about what you're like, what you can cope with, but this whole thing isn't meant to work just on you. It's meant to work on us. If you were her, you wouldn't need me," he pointed out. And she did need him for this. She needed him, but she couldn't see past her own failings to know what he could provide for her. She didn't want to need him, as far as brett could see, and that would be a huge issue.

She hadn't thought about it from that angle, but she could see his point. She just didn't know how much it would matter in the end. "I don't want to start something I can't finish, especially if it puts you right back into a shitty position where you'd get swallowed right back up again by this city." she said. "What makes you think I could do any of this? That I'm not going to just...screw it all up and you over at the same time, just because I'm fucked in the head now?" she asked. "You know how bad things can be. I have to have you help me rewrite the notes you gave me so Jackson won't pop by at random and see your handwriting." she said something she'd forgotten about til just then. "And I need those notes. You used to--" she stopped there again.

"I used to manage your meds for you?" Brett suggested as a finish to that line. "I used to know exactly what you took when. Still do. Like I know how much is too much when you drink. I know what you like to eat and what you don't. I know when you're having trouble with shit, and yeah, I know how bad things can be. And you don't know that you can't finish it either. And neither of us will know that if we never even try. But I'm willing to and if it fucks up, then it fucks up, but what's the alternative? We both end up six feet under. Because it's too late, Princess - it's already to fucking late. The Echo had your information, Jackson has mine. Your grand plan to go down fighting and 'save me' or what the fuck ever won't work either, because they won't let me be saved. We can't stay where we are - we're already into it and this is our best hope of finding a way out. I can't do this without you. You can't do this without me. So, we're stuck with each other, way I see it."

She listened, and some of that information actually surprised her. Like him knowing when she'd had too much, or that he'd paid any attention to what she might like or not like to eat. Those were details that she would have sworn he wouldn't know in the slightest. And she wondered what it said that he did. He was a cop. That's all. He just notices things. She answered herself. "You could talk to one of the higher up girls at Babylon. Go into business with her. She'd at least be fully functioning." And granted, no one at Babylon when she'd left held a candle to her back in the day, but nowadays, he'd likely be better off with a sub-par replacement for who she used to be than the broken little fuck up waiting to happen that was her. "I think the plan is solid, I think it could work. Just...not with me in the equation. I think you're going to sell yourself short otherwise. You'll just set yourself up to fail. If you do that then what's all this been for?"

"Fuck it, Julia - I don't want one of the higher up girls in Babylon - this plan either runs with you, or it doesn't run at all. I'm not gonna... You don't get this at all, do you? You just don't see. This isn't about me. Stop fucking making this all about me. If this was all about me I would have let you go off and got your brains blown out to get me out of here rather than fucking fighting you tooth and fucking nail every damn step of the way," he exclaimed, clearly frustrated, though the pure and unadulterated anger had disappeared. "And I think you could do it. You have a reputation, and people are going to see that reputation. that wouldn't work with anyone else. Anyone else would be an upstart exwhore who couldn't get anywhere near where we'd need to be for this to have a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding," he told her, taking his frustration out in pure, blunt truth. "You can rise above that, and we can give them what they want to see. And your reputation and what they think they see will gloss over some of the cracks at first, while we work out exactly what those cracks are." And with a hell of a lot of luck, they'd work it out faster than people would realise and be able to keep one step ahead. And if they couldn't, they'd be dead.

She didn't say anything for a few moments, going over what he said in her mind, weighing it. "Why won't you just walk away?" she asked. "Go with the original plan, and just...drift once the O'Malleys start to crash and burn? Go...be a bartender somewhere, or take up fishing or leave the city, or...anything. I know you'd never go and fulfill Jackson's little insane dreams, but why not something else? Why this?" If she understood that better, maybe she'd be able to deal better, she didn't know. But she needed to ask.

He looked at her, hating her in that moment for making him say it, for making him actually admit it. "I couldn't just leave you behind," he said, after a long, long pause. You didn't do that, as much as his persona these days would suggest that he would think you did. But you didn't. It was something that had at it's core been the reason that he'd gone back into a burning building all those years ago and nearly died rescuing a mother and child. You didn't leave someone behind.

It was clear that she hadn't expected that. At all. That it threw her, and pretty soundly. There was an immediate expression on her features that almost looked like hurt, and there was a lot of uncertainty. The next question, of course, was 'why'. But she wasn't sure she wanted to know. It was already cracking her mind a little bit the idea that he was going the direction he was going because he didn't want to cut her lose to leave her to her own devices. It made his insistence that she not do anything suicidal make more sense. It put things into a perspective that she'd not considered previously, that was for sure. "Even if I want to be?" she asked. She didn't really want him to. And the way her tone wavered a little gave away that it was just riding the line of truth. She wanted him around, she wanted him with her. Even if they did drive each other crazy, there was something there. So she didn't want him to be gone, but she was still drowning in the overwhelming fear of the idea that she'd look at living long term. Where she might have to deal with survival.

"I think you already know the answer to that question," he told her, since they'd fought the subject enough times. There was nothing really new here - she was just forcing him to say it outloud, admit to it. And she was having to deal with hearing it. Served the bitch right.

Eris exhaled and shut her eyes, staying that way for a few long moments. Then she made a sound that was almost like a laugh, but wasn't quite, and she shook her head, leveling her gaze back on him. "So, I won't give up on you, and won't let any of that go, and you refuse to leave me behind." she assessed. Then she waited, so that he could confirm or deny that she'd gotten that laid out right.

"Like I said - we're stuck with each other," he told her, meeting her eyes resolutely.

She didn't look away, she just kept her eyes on his. "If I'd left...would you have looked for me?" she asked. She didn't think he would have found her, because she likely would have gone so far off the rails that there wouldn't be much to find, but she wanted to know. She wasn't asking to make herself feel better or worse, she was asking because she needed to know. And her tone suggested that. It wasn't some warm or fluffy 'aww, darling' thing, nor was it a passive aggressive attempt to see if some ploy had worked.

Brett didn't actually know the answer to that question. His instinct was that he wanted the answer to be 'no' - he'd definitely decided that if she walked, he wasn't going to stop her. But he'd looked for her three days straight last time, so who could tell. Anyway, if she thought that he'd let her go if she walked, then maybe she'd be more likely to try it again in the future. "if you really wanted to be gone, Princess, then there's nothing I could do to change that," he said, instead, not really giving his opinion on what he would have done, just the end result.

Nodding, she accepted the answer even if it wasn't exactly what she'd asked. Drawing in a deep breath, she let it out slowly again, and tried to untense herself, though that was a job that was easier said than done. She pushed herself up onto the countertop she'd been leaning against, and she kept her eyes on him. "Come here." she said.

He didn't, not immediately. There was a definite pause before he walked over to her, stopping in front of her, not entirely sure what she had in mind here. then again, he wasn't at all sure where they were here anymore either. They seemed to have... he didn't know what. There'd been argument and fury and all sorts and now - now he didn't know.

She kept her eyes on his. And as she did so, she spoke. "If we're doing this, and it's not going to crash and burn the second we start, there are certain things that are going to have to happen." she said. Reaching out, she just barely brushed her fingertips over where she could see the scars on his chest, where his shirt wasn't fastened.

Brett kept his eyes on hers, but he reached up and detached her hand from his chest, firmly and resolutely. "Go on," he told her, verbally attending to the subject, finally cluing into his state of dress currently. The only reason he didn't immediately go and cover his scars was that she wasn't looking at them, she was looking at him, which gave him time.

She'd known he'd stop her. That was the point she was making. "Brett, if we're selling this? You need to know that everyone is watching. All the time. And they're especially going to be watching us. Which means if our story flies even the slightest little bit? You can't flinch when I touch you." she told him. And she wasn't trying to chide him, and she wasn't trying to get anything out of him--she was being wholly honest. Serious. "They see anything of the kind, they see annoyance flash in your eyes, then they're going to swarm in so fast you'll not even know what hit you. They'll want to find ways to separate us because it's always easier to take down single people than it is to take down a working pair." she said. "You need to understand that."

Then don't touch me there, Brett thought to himself, but he could get the point she was making, so he kept that to himself, his face carefully blank. "So, how do you want to sell this then?" He asked, instead, wanting to know what she had in mind, what she wanted from him.

"I think the angles we were talking about before work best. You're just the dumb muscle I have on my arm, for whatever reasons I want, I'll probably tell everyone who asks something different, to specifically have confusion there. But the front's got to be that you're mine. And you consider me yours. I'll probably play it that I'm just letting you think that. But you'll need to play your part too. Like you were saying--overprotective. On a massive scale. Unappreciative of anyone deciding they want to 'borrow' me for a few minutes. That way you'll be there, and anything I miss, you'll catch." she said. She kept her eyes on his. He hadn't given her hand back when he'd taken it, and she made no move to, even if she understood the real contact at the moment was through holding onto his gaze and not letting hers waver. "But if you don't think that's going to work or you can do it, then you need to tell me now, so another angle can be thought of, or if you've got one in mind already."

Brett considered that. "No - that works best for me. And it'll fit with what everyone else thinks of me anyway. There's not that many people who actually know for a fact that I'm anything different - and most of those wrote me off completely when I was kicked off the force."

She nodded, a slight incline of her head. "You realize that we're going to have to get along better." she said. "At least in front of them. Like I said, they'll be watching. They'll want to find cracks, because no one's going to be happy someone new's starting to invade their turf, even if one of them does happen to have had a place at the table with the big boys before. Possibly especially because of that, and also if we claim downing the O'Malleys. We're going to need to be careful. And we're going to have to trust each other." Which was the kicker, really. "So...do you trust me? I don't think you do. I don't think you ever have. And that's...a major problem." she said. And it was just like what she'd done earlier. She wasn't yelling at him for it, there wasn't the slightest hint in her tone that she was giving him a hard time. She wasn't. She just thought she knew where that one stood, and they'd need that out in the open before it became an issue.

"I trust you more than I trust anyone else right now," he told her, after a moment or two. He couldn't simply claim pure trust in anyone. he doubted he would ever completely trust anyone ever again, but she had as much as he could give right now. "I trust you to be honest with me. We might not have total trust, but we do have honesty. Between us, anyway." They could lie to the rest of the world, but they were honest with each other. Often painfully so.

"I don't know if it'll be enough." she said. "...what we're basically talking about here is a con. A long, involved con we can't actually let drop. And sure, it's just keeping what my issues are a secret? But it's involved. Anything like that is. It won't be easy and people'll always try to work an angle back. If you don't trust me, if you can't..." and there was a softer inflection there. Slight, just a tiny bit, but she did get that for him it was likely not wholly to do with him being willfully distrusting, but likely had much more to do with deep psychological issues that he couldn't just shut off because she said so. Or even he said so. "We're probably not going to last very long." she told him. Well, he'd said they had honesty, so she was most certainly holding up her end of that. "How don't you trust me?" she asked, wondering if she could try to work at it from another angle.

Brett didn't answer at first, but he knew his heart rate picked up, suddenly thumping in his chest from the very prospect of answering that question. "I... Don't know," he said, which wasn't quite the truth, yet was. He didn't know entirely, but he could think of a few examples. He flexed his jaw, biting his teeth together for a moment as he hovered, then took a breath, a deep inhalation through his nose, and brought her hand to rest back on his chest again.

She was a bit surprised when he did that. She'd been more thinking about how he automatically assumed that she'd left him the first time and it had been some malicious thing on her part. How he never quite believed her reasons on it. So, when he brought her hand back where she'd initially put it to prove her point, it did, in fact, surprise her. She brushed her thumb across his skin, over where it was scarred, and she kept her eyes on his, still not letting herself take the out of looking away. Not when they were talking about this, and they were in pretty deep, here. She leaned a little closer to him, not really an invasion of his space so much as a small distance. When she spoke her voice was quieter. "Do you still expect me to reject you?" she asked, wanting to understand.

"Yes," Brett told her, doing that brutal honesty thing there. Everything was all wrapped up in that. The vast majority of his anxieties and trust issues were somehow rooted in that one simple fact, though not even Brett was entirely aware of that. That would have needed a self-awareness that he just didn't possess. But he did - and when she left, the times she left, that played right into the same issues. Just on a very slightly different level.

She nodded, accepting the answer he gave her. She slid her hand up a little, beneath his shirt, going slow, so she didn't jar him too much with it--what with her knowing that he was probably hating every single second of this. "I'm not going to." she told him. "Which I know isn't something you're just going to be able to accept, and everything's fixed." she added, so he didn't think she thought it was going to be easy. Drawing in a deep breath, she let it out slowly. "I actually like being around you." she said, which was about as close as she was going to get to admitting she cared. "Even if we fight a good ninety five percent of the time we spend together. It's not based..." she started, then started again, to explain herself better. "Other relationships start because you meet someone and you like them and you're attracted to them and things go the way they're going to go." Or, they did for normal people, like Brett used to be. But she was specifically putting it in terms he could apply to past experience. "You and I met under very different circumstances, and nothing about our relationship could be termed as 'normal'. It doesn't fall under the same rules. I'm not going to randomly decide that because you aren't physically perfect, that I've got better things to do with my time. That never came into the picture in the first place." And she paused there, just to see if he was actually following her logic.

He made himself not flinch as she did that, concentrating on holding her gaze. "Think you're kind down playing it with 'not physically perfect', Princess," he said, his voice steady and firm, but controlled. He paused for a moment, then brought his own hands up, slowly undoing the rest of the buttons of his shirt and dropping it off his shoulder onto the floor, the cold air striking his skin and giving him goosebumps over those parts of his skin that were still unscarred enough to have hair follicles left. He didn't want her to see, he'd never wanted her to see, but if she didn't, then he'd always wonder. He needed to know. His hands went to his pants, dropping them too and stepping out of them, so she could see how the scarring continued all down the length of his left leg.

She took her time, looking him over. She noticed tattoos that she'd never seen before, which drew her eye, even if she was aware that wasn't where her eyes were meant to be drawn. Still, she looked at them too, before, studying the ruins that were the scars he had. She'd felt it, and she'd seen bits, but it really didn't seem to hold much of a candle to actually seeing the full effect. Reaching out, she traced fingertips along some of the clearer lines, watching where it started and stopped, learning exactly where it was. Pulling slightly on his shoulder, she ticked her gaze back up to his eyes. "Turn around." she said.

He did as she requested, knowing that the scarring wasn't nearly as bad on his back as it was on his front. He could still remember how it had felt, when his clothes had gone up - the way he'd managed to rip off his shirt, taking most of the skin of his chest with it. Or that had been how it had felt. Then someone had been rolling him, and then it was days later in the hospital and his body was a mass of pain and bandages and there was a nurse telling him that if he wasn't lucky, if he got an infected wound, then like as not he'd be dead. He didn't even remember about the people he'd saved until he was told about it the next week.

Eris kept up light exploration with her fingertips, looking him up and down. She saw the little crescent gouges she'd dug into the back of his shoulder too. Leaning forward, she brushed a kiss over the worst one that looked like it had bled a little more than the others. She stayed close, looking at the scars from there. Laying her palm flat against his back, over some of where the scarring was worst there, she just gave herself a minute, to properly appreciate what he was showing her.

He didn't move as she ran her hand over his body, he hardly flinched as she kissed him. When she put her hand on him properly, he looked back over his shoulder at her, waiting to see, waiting for her to look at him, needing to see the look in her eyes.

When she felt him move a little, she turned her eyes back up on his. "Still here." she told him. "I've seen, I appreciate what the damage is." she continued, tone light. "Still here." she repeated. "I like your ink." she added on the end, because she did. It was something genuine and positive she could put in there. Plus, it would let him know that she'd noticed, that the scars he had hadn't entirely blotted out the world or her attention.

He looked at her, really looked at her, searching her eyes for that spark of disgust he'd seen before. And it wasn't there. And part of him that deep, destructive part that was so broken by now, it wanted the world to shit on him, felt cheated, felt like he was somehow being lied to, that she was tricking him and wanted to blame her for not having a bad reaction. "You're changing the subject," he told her, trying to pick something vaguely constructive out of that push of negativity. It wasn't much, but he was trying.

"No, I'm not." she said. "I was making a statement. I think maybe you look in the mirror, and that's all you see." she said, sliding her hand over another mess of scars towards his side. "But it wasn't all I saw." Which she hoped would sink in. It would probably take work. Time. But she'd been willing to do that before, with him. Had decided the other night that she'd put said time and effort in. Now wasn't any different, really.

"It's not normal. I'm not..." he protested, before breaking off and starting to pull his clothes back on. Somehow, rejection seemed easier than acceptance. At least with rejection you didn't actually have to deal with it. Acceptance felt somehow unreal, like he couldn't see where the catch was. He looked at her as he buttoned up his pants, his shirt still abandoned on the floor. "Everyone else who's seen - you can see it. The pity. Or the horror. You can see it in there eyes, hear it in their fucking voices," he told her, his tone bitter even whilst he was trying to explain.

"Normal isn't normal." Eris said. "All that shit that gets fed to everyone? None of it's real. No one finds their one true love goes home and lives happily ever after. The dragons win. No one's perfect. Everyone's got their deep, dark secrets hidden down inside, everyone's got something that's rotting their insides. Especially in this town. Or maybe that's just my experience. But either way, you're not getting that from me. It's there, I know, I've now seen you, touched you. And whatever those 'normal' girls have given you? Since you consider yourself not normal anymore, maybe you need to keep abnormal company. If anything's going to drive me away...it won't be that."

He turned round to finally face her, looking down into her eyes. "You don't tell anyone else. No matter what games we're playing, no matter what you need to do to me, to get people thinking whatever we need them to think? This doesn't come into it. At all," he told her. They didn't mention her mental scarring, they wouldn't mention his physical.

She looked up at him, and she could have told him that she didn't actually talk to anyone else. That even if all of this happened and all, she still wasn't going to be having conversations that might involve 'so yeah, my boy over there has these wicked scars...'. She told him what was both the truth and what he needed to hear. "You have my word." she told him, keeping her eyes locked to his.

He nodded of acceptance of that, when it came, wasn't immediate, but it was there, and it was honest. He took her at her word. The rest, he could work with when he was alone. the rest was dealing with himself. "Wanna pass me my shirt?" he asked her, so that maybe she'd know that his getting dressed wasn't a move to cover everything up. It wasn't - she'd seen now, she knew. But that didn't get over the fact that this house was damn cold.

She nodded, and she moved to get it for him, and at the last second, she held it up and out, so he could slide his arms in. She was glad that he'd accepted her answer. That...was something. That she felt like might be the beginnings of progress. She could work with that, she could hold onto that. And, next time they hit a snag, maybe she'd do the same thing. Try and figure out where exactly he was having an issue, and do things directly. It was a working theory, anyhow.

He took his time, pulling his shirt on and buttoning it up as best he could before turning back to her, thinking things over. "You mentioned a relationship," he said, eventually, picking up on threads of what had been discussed. "You. Me. Us. And - you're right. I'm not normal. Especially not... I can't give you that. Like normal people. Not even in private. I - I can't promise you something I don't know how to do. This, between us - it's never going to be like that," he told her, since they were going with honesty.

"I said relationship and I meant it. But I never said it was going to be some fluffy little romantic thing either." she told him. "Relationship is just a word. It gets defined as you go. I would say I'm not capable of what people would consider anything normal either. I'm not built for it. If you're saying you want absolutely nothing..." she said, trailing it off, so he'd have the opportunity to tell her if that was the case. But she wasn't bothered at all by what he'd said. She'd been the one to first put it into context, even. How them being together wasn't some silly scenario that anyone else would have got to that position through.

"I want you," Brett told her. He was fine with the physical. I just can't promise to love you, he thought. He just didn't think he was enough of a jerk to actually say that. "But... the rest? The 'fluffy little romantic thing'? It would be a lie if you made me do it. I... Can't." That was the nearest he could come to explaining. Whenever he got near to feeling like that, somehow it got turned round into anger. He just simply couldn't.

"Brett, I don't think I'm capable of making you do anything." she said first. "And I wouldn't want to. I mentioned that I like being around you. You think it's because I'm entertaining notions that you're sighing wistfully when I'm not around, wondering what I'm doing? I'd rather if you're going to spare thought my way that it lent it self more towards where you can get away with marking me up without anyone being the wiser." she told him, being honest as well. "Romance...to me it's a lie. It's always been a lie, I've never once seen it happen where it's been genuine. There's always some shady aspect, always some failing. I'd prefer we skip it." She leaned back a little on the counter, eyes still on him. "I want you. You want me. I think that qualifies for whatever it is we have, and we can work with that." And if anything else happened, they'd burn that bridge when they came to it.

Brett wasn't in the same place she was. He believed that romance existed - for other people. He believed that it could work - for other people. It just wasn't something that he could manage himself. It wasn't something he even wanted for himself. The idea of whispering sweet nothings to some simpering little girlie left him cold. "I'm good with our... arrangement. And skipping the rest." he couldn't bring himself to actually refer to it as a relationship. he got what she meant about a relationship being able to be whatever you made it be, but still... Between a man and a woman, especially when there was sex involved, there were certain expectations and preconceptions that went with that which he would rather avoid.

She nodded. Well that settled that then. She supposed. Mostly. However it worked out. She imagined it'd be something they did a whole lot of playing by ear with. Learning as they went. She knew she'd have to learn, considering she'd never actually wanted anyone before. Not like this. Not someone who honestly captured her attention and held it, who she felt genuine desire for. That she was drawn to on a number of levels. "Good. And bear with me I've not done this before." she added. just so he'd kind of be aware there. They could both shoot in the dark on this one. "How's your hand?" she asked.

"Princess - last time I had an honest-to-god girlfriend? I was barely out of high school," Brett pointed out to her. "I kinda gave up on the whole 'find a girl and settle down' bullshit when this happened to me," he said, that bitterness back in his tone. He'd actually tried a few times, after he'd recovered from his burns. He'd had a few girlfriends. And each time, it would go well, they'd like him, he'd like them, things would click along at the right pace, there'd usually be drinking, dancing, a meal maybe - then back to his place, or theirs. And then they'd see. And that would be it. End of. Eventually, Brett just stopped trying. And that's when the bitterness and anger at his life started to take over. "So, what we have? On any level, it's new to me as well."

"You've at least had the experience at one point. Which is one up on me. A long time ago or not, you never really forget." she told him honestly. "I know I've said it before, but this..." she made a vague gesture between them. "Has never happened." Her brain damage jarred a whole lot loose in her brain, and that was apparently one thing that rattled loose. And while she never did and likely never would believe in love at all, she knew there was something between the two of them. Desire, for certain, though she knew it was more than that. She just didn't know how to properly define it and wasn't bothered about finding a way either. As far as she was concerned, it could stay undefined.

Brett raised an eyebrow. "That meant to make me feel special, Princess?" he asked her, sarcasm stopping it being a real question that he might want to know the answer to, albeit that otherwise it could have been that. He moved straight on anyway without giving her an opportunity of reply, looking down as he brought his hand up and flexed it again. It was painful, stiff, slightly swollen, but he had movement. "I don't think anything's broken," he told her.

She was glad that he moved on, because there was a little needling in there, and she didn't really want to deal with it. Pushing all the emotions that rose up in the wake of the sarcastic comment back again, she looked at his hand again, focusing there. "Well it looks like hell. You should still probably have a professional look at it. You could have closed fractures, or...who knows what." She'd also tell him that he should ice it, but that would be non-doable in a house where there likely wasn't any ice.

Brett looked for a moment like he was going to blow it off, but then nodded. "Yeah, well - maybe I will. Legitimate injury and all, right?" he half joked. Most of the injuries he got couldn't actually be said to be that. And there was a limit to the amount you could right off as 'bar brawl', especially when there hadn't been any bar fights. Somehow walking into the ER and putting down 'knife wound sustained in drug deal gone wrong' didn't fly. That kind of thing wasn't dealt with by the proper authorities, but there was always someone willing to help out - especially when his employers were picking up the tab.

She arched a brow at him that clearly stated that she didn't necessarily consider 'having a temper tantrum' a legitimate injury, but she didn't say it. Things were still bothering her a little, so she was having a slight bout of thinking the less she said the better. Which didn't mean she was going to be entirely silent, because he'd pick up on that. "I think you should. If nothing else, it might sideline you for a little while if it is broken or they cast it. It'll give you more time to work on other things." Like getting the box from Babylon. Which she suddenly felt vulnerable about. Especially with where her head was at the moment.

Brett hated the idea of being in a cast. It might sideline him, but it would also make him really, really vulnerable if anyone came for him. Unable to throw a punch, and unable to pull a trigger. "It won't be broken," he told her, as though he could make that true simply by stating it with enough certainty.

Eyeing his hand again, she wasn't entirely positive about that. "I don't know." she said. "Looks very swollen to me, and I don't know if the bleeding's stopped, but you definitely did a number on yourself." she said. Granted, the cloth she'd wrapped around his knuckles was red and therefore was just darker red where he was bleeding through, but that wasn't the point. "Looks worse than last time." she added. Since the last time he'd had knuckle injuries she'd patched him up. Sure, it was a few days later, but she was now even more willing to bet that he'd done the same thing that time. Only the walls in his apartment were probably a lot more forgiving than the walls of the basement.

Brett drew his hand back. He'd hoped that she would have put last time down to him getting into a fight - clearly not. Clearly she'd pieced that one together. "You know, sometimes you remember things that I'd prefer you to forget," he grumbled at her. Like the knowledge that she got to him that much.

She spoke without thinking about it, just the first thing that went through her mind when he said it. "Rattle me around a little, see what I forget." she said. Which was more an internal fear of hers, and wasn't something she intended to share. It was something Gray had told her more than once. That with the damage she already had, it would be easier for her to get more. And any more slipping could result in very very bad things. Like the mentality of a child, or more memory lapses, or her motor functions could go out the window...there were other things, she just didn't actually remember the whole spiel. She just remembered the things that had scared her the most. "You didn't have any other injuries." she said, sliding down off of the countertop.

"Not the reason I'd rattle you around a little," Brett told her, and for possibly the first time with her, his tone held something that could only be described as a hint of flirtatiousness, though it warred with his standard, gruff tone as he thought back to the other night. He, for one, was definitely never going to be forgetting that one. "And it had been a few days - plus, they don't always get to hit back," Brett pointed out, catching on to what she was probably saying.

His tone, or the hint in there actually derailed her for a moment. Not visibly, it just jumped her mental track a little bit and she looked over, smirking lightly at him. "No?" she asked, tone with an innocent cast to it. "Have other reasons, would you?" she asked. She also reached out to take his injured hand again, to look it over once more. She was looking for where it seemed to be swelling the most, see where the bruises were flooding out from. "I know. You're good." she told him. "Still. You scrape your knuckles that bad you're either in a fight that would show up elsewhere as well...or you hit something that wasn't moving." she told him, ticking her gaze up to look at him through her eyelashes. "Now that I've seen first hand that I bring out the temper in you..." she trailed off, like it was actually news. There was a mildly teasing tone to her voice too. Yeah, she brought that out really really well.

Brett tilted his head to one side and looked down at her, meeting her eyes. "Are you afraid?" he asked, both teasing and actually asking a question. He wondered in that moment whether she appreciated that he would never actually really hurt her. He recalled her reaction when he pushed her down, before she'd known that there was a mattress there, when she'd thought he was throwing her to the floor. She hadn't trusted him in that moment. "Do you trust me?"

That was probably as convoluted an answer as he had for her. In the end? She gave him the answer that felt the truest to her. "I want to." For her, it was messy. It was a whole lot of going against what she'd thought about human nature and people her entire life. It also played in that she knew a lot of the things he should do would result in selling her out. So she expected him to do that, if certain situations arose. And she realized that she didn't know the difference there. She didn't know if she just went with what was logical, or if she really believed he'd do it. That internal conflict showed in her eyes for a moment, a flicker in her expression.

That'll be a 'no' then. "What don't you trust?" he asked her, giving her the same question that she'd given him early, knowing how hard that could be to answer. It took an effort for him to ask it, for him to not see that look in her eyes and walk away, to lash out at that. But he'd set on a course, and he was going to follow that course, and that meant actually talking to the woman, rather than just arguing with her.

She leaned back against the counter again, giving herself time to formulate an answer. "I never trusted anyone. Ever. The little bit that I have? Probably got me killed. My last bodyguard, Clayton...he wasn't there. That night, he was...somewhere else. And I don't know if he fucked me over or was lured away, but either way?" she shrugged one shoulder, then looked away for a moment. Then, she looked back, forcing herself to meet his eyes. "Then I woke up to...whatever this life is, and there was Gray." she said. "And let's not really get into the gorey details there, but let's say he didn't make me feel any better about the human race than I had before." Which was true, and she really didn't want to think about it, espeically while standing in his kitchen. "Then there was you." She stopped there, tone indicating that was a turning point, but she still wasn't sure how to explain it. "I know...I know you'll try." she said finally. "I know that you'll go out of your way. But I also know what kind of situation we're in. And if for some reason your boys showed, and I was caught...you'd have to turn on me. If I get caught and hauled in, either by them, or the cops, you'll have to walk away. There won't be anything you can do, if you want to survive, and I know you do." she said. "I don't blame you for it. It doesn't upset me. That's just how it is." she continued, truth in her tone there. That was how she viewed it, how it looked from her end. "But it does mean that I know it's there. And I can't let myself forget that. My position in your life is dangerous at best, and at any given moment...the life you saw fit to save? You'd have to cut short. Even if it wasn't by your own hand." She gave him a light half smirk. "And occasionally, I've waited to see if you were going to hit me. Though that's usually when we're in the middle of some of our worst arguments. That's just life too, though." Which was something that was just her perspective.

"Then we'll just have to not get caught," Brett told her, though he knew it wasn't that easy. Doable, but not that easy. "I can talk my way out of a lot of things, Princess. I know you look at me and you see a guy who's stuck where I am. Stuck in a fucking hole, never moved up, never got out. Never really did anything. But I do have some things going for me, I'm not totally new to all this. They trust me. They didn't, at first. At first, they watched me, day and night. Even with the story we'd set up, even with the evidence - hell, even once the shit fucking hit the fan for me and it was suddenly all real, they didn't fucking trust me. But they do now - they have done for over a year now. Enough that they don't watch me any more, enough that they'll take my word over others. They think I'm too dumb to lie, and they think I've got nowhere else to go. And yeah, to get that trust, I sold people out. People I worked with, shopped them and what they were doing to earn that trust I needed to get myself into the position I needed to be. And I'm not fucking proud of myself for that, but I did it because it needed to be done, and I tell myself that they were scumbags anyway, and what I shopped them for? They should have been arrested for. Would have been arrested for if I was able to do my job. But that was then, and I did it with a purpose - and that purpose wasn't just to save my own fucking skin. Yeah, I'm a survivor, but not like that. Never like that. Like I'm never gonna hit you. Like there'll always be a mattress there." He couldn't predict what the future would hold, but he could say some things about how he'd react. And if he was always looking out for number one, they'd never have gotten here in the first place.

It was good to know that he didn't think he'd ever hit her. Or, he said he wouldn't, but there was always going to be a little part of Eris that expected it out of people. And Brett? Well, Brett had a temper. A bad one. But she could appreciate the statement. She listened to what he was saying, and she nodded slightly, even if she thought there were still angles there to be discussed. "I know you wouldn't sell me out just to sell me out." she said. "I trust you not to do that. And I know you could talk your way out of some things, it's why I think you'd have to turn on me in the first place. I do think you could do it. Hell. I'd back you up. If I did get caught, even with you, it's not like I'd tell them the truth. If I got to say anything before I ate a bullet." Sometimes she wondered if they'd keep her around to torture for a bit or just end it fast. "All I'm saying is that I know you'd have to. That with the way things are, if situations got messy, you'd have to. I'm just aware. You asked me if I trusted you, I'm trying to explain. I want to trust you. I just know that it's situational."

He looked at her, long and hard, assessing her at that. He wasn't sure if he was even going to tell her what he was thinking, but in the end, after a long silence, he did. "Your world, it's a very different place to mine," he said, meant as a stand alone comment. He wasn't looking for a discussion from here. It was merely an observation. Their own personal worlds, the way they viewed everything. He saw it sometimes, just how different things were for them. Even now, even with everything that had gone on. His world was still nowhere near as jaded as hers was. It was always almost surprising to rediscover that when he saw it.

"I hope so." she said, voice just a little softer than it had been. She meant that, even if she didn't explain it. She did hope that he didn't wind up with a world view like hers. If he did, then things weren't going to work. They kind of needed that push and pull between perspectives, and she knew that with the thoughts of what they were going to be getting into, she'd especially need it then. She was quiet for a few moments, keeping her eyes on him. "Does it bother you?" she asked. "You don't disagree, do you?" she asked, really hoping he wouldn't. "I'm right, aren't I?"

He frowned a little at that. "Right about what?" he asked her, not getting where she was going with that. And he wasn't just going to agree with her on something simply because she wanted him to. Fuck that - she'd have to explain herself first.

"That if anything happened, you'd have to sell me out." she said. "Or if I got caught, or arrested or something, you'd have to walk." She didn't really see any other option there, so she really didn't know what it was he needed clarified.

"It's not that simple, sweetheart. You can't just blanket-predict a situation like that, without knowing the circumstances around it," he told her, flat out refusing to agree with her on that. You didn't just lay down and give up, and he wouldn't just hand her another scenario for her to cling to where she could decide that she was fucked. That was just her being self-destructive again and he wasn't buying into her bullshit that way.

"I can trust you not to want to." she said. "I just think at the end of the day, you're a survivor, and you're far smarter than anyone gives you credit for. You'd do the smart thing." she said, tone sure on that. He wasn't doing the smart thing now, but that was because his hand wasn't being forced. And, if she was looking at it like that, the big chance he'd taken with her...it had been when no one was looking. When he could get away with it. So even his internal rebellion against all he did and who he'd become had actually been chosen at the most opportune time, as opposed to anything else. She thought that he'd be stunningly unappreciative of that, however, so she just didn't share that thought.

To Brett's mind, 'doing the smart thing' didn't automatically equal 'selling her out', so he could just about agree to that one. "Sure, I'd do the smart thing," he agreed, lightly, not explaining his reasoning behind that. He could agree that he'd use his head and do what he could with the situation. Depending on what the situation was.

Eris arched a brow at him thinking he was probably not quite agreeing with her. If he was, she'd be getting more argument. But in the end, she didn't think the argument was worth continuing. She was quiet for a few long moments, keeping her gaze on him. "Do you want me to trust you?" she asked. Her tone was purely questioning. It wasn't a challenge, or something that was going to lead into some ultimatum. Where she would, if he did fill-in-the-blank. It didn't work like that.

"Yes." Brett didn't answer the question lightly, and there was a seriousness to his tone. There as almost as much pressure to being trusted as there was to trusting. In this circumstance, anyway. Where it meant something to him, where he wasn't simply setting out to gain trust for some kind of an ulterior motive. Where if she trusted him, he'd want to follow through on that. But, the answer was the right one, it was an expression of what he already knew. What he'd already been doing for months now. In certain ways, he kew, she already trusted him, and he'd stepped into certain roles. He was already looking to take on more, and he hated it when she didn't. Yes, he wanted her to trust him.

She could tell that it wasn't something he was just tossing out there for the hell of it. That it was something that held it's own weight. Giving him the lightest of half smirks, she shook her head a bit. "Interesting predicament, isn't it?" she asked rhetorically. "Two people with some of the worlds worst trust issues, wanting to trust and be trusted." She sighed. "Other people would think it should be easy." She was aware there were people in the world who would likely not see at all what the hell their problems were. Especially considering the sorts of things they'd been through together. Like the fact that he'd saved her life to begin with.

"'Other people' would probably think lots of things," Brett pointed out. They'd already had the 'abnormal' discussion, after all. He had a feeling that most people, if given a glimpse into their lives, simply wouldn't understand.

"I think we have our work cut out for us." she said. And she did. Hell she didn't even know if it was actually possible in the end. She knew for herself the concept was foreign. She'd played so many people in her time, getting them to trust her, and she sure as fuck hadn't deserved it. She'd used it. So, knowing how she used to be...yeah. The concept of trust was a difficult one for her to accept. She stepped a little closer to him, finally pushing off of the counter again. "I'll try." she said. So he'd at least know she was going to be putting effort in. That she wasn't just going to give up on this point.

"We both will," Brett agreed, knowing that was as good as they could expect. Honesty, trying for trust. They couldn't promise anything more.