BFF/GF Who: Rowan and Liah Where: The stairwell, then the suite. Aloooooone. When: Early afternoon
After lunch, Rowan had left Juniper downstairs with Jasper and Verity, fascinated by all the cords and wires and things he was playing with and promising not to get in the way, and started climbing the stairs doggedly, looking for Liah and munching on an apple.
An apple! Someone had brought in a whole bowl full of fresh apples, and he'd already had one, plus Juniper had, had one, and been very excited about it. He was on his second, and had a third and a fourth in a pocket. One for later, he wasn't sure who for just for later, and one for Liah. Because your best-friend-slash-girlfriend definitely deserved fresh fruit.
Liah was heading down the stairs, vaguely thinking about finding something for lunch. She'd gotten preoccupied with searching the 8th floor rooms, with Coyote's help-- if help consisted of bragging about various things and making snarky remarks, that was-- and then she'd gone back to their suite to put the stuff she'd found away, and then she'd gone up to the roof for some fresh air. It was only after she'd come back inside that she'd realized she was getting hungry. She should have the best legs ever, she thought as she marched down flight after flight, with all the stair climbing she did each day. At least going down was easier than coming up.
She encountered Rowan on one of the landings and nearly did a double take when she saw what he was eating. "Where'd you get that?" she demanded.
This was handy! "Hey, it's exactly who I was looking for." Grinning nonchalauntly, as if he'd been expecting her to come down the stairs right then, Rowan pulled one of the other apples from his pocket to hold up, not quite offering it to her, though that was his intention, in a minute. "They were just down in the kitchen. Maybe somebody found an apple tree. I think they're mostly gone, now, but I saved a couple." He chomped a big bite out of the one he had already been eating from, with a satisfying crunching sound.
Liah leaned against the stairwell wall, crossing her arms and giving him a skeptical, arched eyebrow. "You gonna share, or do I have to bribe you?" she wanted to know. It felt like forever since she'd had fresh fruit, and it hadn't even been anything she'd eaten all that much before everything had gone kablooey. She was so tired of the meager offerings they had to choose from now, though, that even the thought of a piece of fruit was enough to make her mouth practically water.
"Well, I was gonna just give it to you, but now you mention it, a bribe sounds kinda nice," Rowan said with an even bigger grin and a lazy sort of expression, holding the apple just out of her reach. "What'll you give me for it?" He was angling for something like a kiss, because he was just planning on giving it to her, and kisses were free. Plus, he was still kind of unaccustomed to getting them from her, and they were still pleasant surprising.
Liah waggled her eyebrows, uncrossed her arms to put one hand on her hip. "What d'you want?" she asked, trying to sound all seductive. She really didn't want to laugh, but she couldn't help it; she started snickering anyway. "Really? I can't believe I'm about to whore myself out for an apple." She was amused, though, and it wasn't as if she was put off by the idea of kissing Rowan. Hadn't she been ransacking rooms earlier trying to find condoms for use at some unspecified time, after all? She stepped over to invade his personal space, realizing that he had an apple in each hand. She could've, like, tickled him if she'd wanted to. She didn't think that was what he had in mind, though. She plastered herself against him, hands on his hips, and leaned up to find his lips with hers.
It was, Rowan decided, kind of shitty to be kissed so thoroughly and not have hands to cradle, grab hold with, or twine in hair. He swallowed down his apple bite quickly to at least return in kind, bending to meet her mouth and body intently, but hands were full of apples.
Oh, hey, wings. He curled those around them both snugly, in place of hands. It wasn't perfect, but it would do.
When she pulled back-- because of course she would have to first; he wasn't planning on stopping until she decided she'd offered enough of a bribe-- he leaned in for one more quick one and said, "That's a good bribe. I think you definitely win an apple."
Liah wasn't sure she'd ever get tired of being enveloped in those wings; it was something that felt both protective and, in some circumstances, arousing to her. She grinned cheekily at him. "I think that might've been worth an apple and an orange too, but since you don't have an orange, I'll take the apple." It was probably a better lunch than anything she might've found downstairs. "Wanna get out of the stairwell?" she asked him. "It's stuffy in here."
Because it was an amusing thought, Rowan wriggled his arm between them so he could hold the apple right under her nose, figuring she'd let him go to take it, or just take a bite out of it right there in his hand. "All yours. I even have a second one, if you manage to really impress me." He waggled his eyebrows at her teasingly, now, himself. "Upstairs or down, then?" he asked, glancing up towards their (currently empty) suite.
Liah did indeed sink her teeth into the apple, but she didn't take a bite out of it at first. Instead she used her teeth in the fruit to pull it away from him, then disentangled a hand to take hold of it. Once she had it, she pulled the bite of apple loose, chewed it and swallowed it. "Thank you," she said, smiling at his eyebrow waggle. She could impress him, all right, but somehow she didn't think the stairwell was the place for it. "Up," she said decisively. "I don't wanna walk down all those stairs and then have to walk back up them afterwhile." Now that she had something to eat, she didn't need to go downstairs anyway. "Where's Juny?" she asked curiously, having of course noticed that his sister wasn't with him, clinging to him with one of her hands as she usually did when she was around.
Taking a bite from his own, Rowan used his free hand to take her free hand, and started up the stairs. "She's down in the lobby with Ver' and Jasper. They're making flood lights, or something, and she thought it was interesting. They'll bring her back up in an hour or two, I'm sure, once they get sick of keeping her entertained, or she falls asleep or something." Either one was likely, really.
"I think Verity could make anything," Liah said as they headed back up. "It's pretty cool. I wish there was some way we could have lights all the time... don't you get tired of being in the dark on days like today?" It was cloudy and gloomy, and having the drapes open in the rooms helped a little, but not all that much. She worked on eating her apple as they climbed, and it was the best thing she'd eaten in ages. Fresh fruit, hallelujah.
"Oh, I dunno," Rowan said, grinning teasingly at her, and reaching their joined hands over to bop her ass lightly with the back of his knuckles. "Dark's good for some things...." Really, what he hated was being grounded, which he was stuck with being for the next few days. He wasn't letting anything get in the way of his back healing up, this time, except a potential emergency. "But could always light some of the candles. Even if they don't do much good, when it's just dim, not really dark."
Liah bumped his hip with hers after his light smack of her ass. "I used to love the dark, a lot," she said. "But now we have no power, and it gets old. Can you imagine how much fun I had looting rooms today with just a little tiny flashlight? Oh, and Coyote... the dim bulb that is his brain lit things up a little bit." She snickered. She actually kind of liked the dude, though she'd never admit it. He was funny. She crunched on some more of her apple as they neared the 12th floor landing, then said, "Yeah, I like the candles. I think I might go nuts if we didn't have those, at least."
"Dim bulb, all right," Rowan commented with a snicker of his own. "Kind of an ass, actually, but a funny one... kind of, you know, inappropriately funny, but whatever." Cracking jokes and bragging about how awesome you were when you were going on a rescue mission seemed in bad taste, even to Rowan for whom "bad taste" didn't usually exist. He wasn't sure he could like that guy, but he also hadn't exactly given it much thought, let alone a chance. "You were looting again, huh? Find anything interesting?"
"He's entertaining, I'll give him that," Liah remarked. "It was nice to have company as I stole dead people's stuff." She sounded fairly chipper about that, although if she thought about it too long, it would give her the creeps. It was just practical. There was no point in leaving stuff to go to waste that they could use. She used her forearm to push open the stairwell door to the twelfth floor, smiling demurely at him. "Found several interesting things." She'd eaten her apple nearly down to the core, and she took another bite as she walked out of the stairwell into the carpeted hallway.
Rowan still had a few bites left of his, mostly because he was eating his more slowly. But then, this was his second one. He raised his brows at her somewhat significant kind of look. The hell was that smile for? It made him think she was keeping secrets for some more dirty reason. "You gonna tell me what kinds of interesting things you found?" he asked as he fumbled his key out of his pocket; though Liah could just phase through the door, really, if she wanted to, he couldn't.
"Sure," Liah said with a shrug. "I could tell you, or I could just show you. Up to you." She waited for him to open the door with the key and then headed inside, finishing up her apple quickly so she could throw the core away. "Just let me wash the apple off my hands." She smirked at him and moved to the bathroom to wash her hands, tossing over her shoulder, "Meet me in my room." Maybe he'd light some of those candles they'd been talking about, because it'd be dark in there even with the curtain open today.
"I should probably do the same thing," Rowan admitted, looking at his two-thirds eaten apple critically. He hurriedly went through the rest of it, bound and determined not to let anything go to waste, at least as much as possible. He couldn't eat the core itself, but he could get pretty damn close to it. He went to the little kitchenette for his hand-washing, though, as he finished off the last bite. Whatever she had for him, he was curious, so he made it quick before heading into the bedroom, setting the last apple on the bedstand. They could share it later, maybe.
Liah had beat Ro back to the bedroom, and she was busily lighting candles as he walked in. "Long as the smell of smoke doesn't kill us, I guess we're good," was her comment. The illumination did make it feel a lot less gloomy with the clouds outside. She flopped onto the bed and opened up the pillowcase she'd put at the head of it, where she'd stashed all the stuff she'd brought back. "So I went to the eighth floor today, since there was only one key missing from the board-- turns out it was Coyote's." Which would explain why he'd been up there to run into her, right? "Some of the rooms were already picked over, but I found a few things." She pulled out another flashlight, about the size of her small but powerful one, and punched the little button on the end of it to turn it on, then tossed it in Rowan's direction. "Like this."
"Nice." Rowan caught the flashlight, aimed it at the ceiling and then the wall to test the beam, then flicked it off again. He might not be one to think too far ahead, but he'd learned not to waste batteries by now. Mostly, anyway. He set it on the bedside table, behind the apple, and sat on the edge of the bed. He had to be careful getting into things, or onto things, with his wings. He couldn't even properly sit on the edge of a bed, without carefully positioning them first, so right now he was sitting kind of sideways with his hips twisted funny, so his wings were open behind him, off the bed. "We could always use more of those, help out with the kids and shit."
"When you're living somewhere with no power, you can never have enough flashlights," Liah agreed. She dug into the pillowcase again, pulling out a handful of cloth. "This might not be as interesting to you, but I liked it," she said, draping the rose-colored tank top with the thin straps across her front; it was evident that it was skimpier than the one she had on. As hot as it was outside and with no air conditioning inside, Liah wore as few clothes as she could get away with. At least it wasn't still the middle of summer. That would've been awful.
"What makes you think it's not interesting to me?" Rowan asked with a grin that tinged on wicked, reaching over to pluck at one of those skimpy straps. The less clothes she had on, he figured, the better. As long as, you know, Verity didn't start ogling her or anything. Then there might have to be some hitting going on. But if Verity kept his eyes to himself, Rowan was perfectly happy to see Liah in spaghetti straps. "Bet it'll look awesome on you."
"Not as interesting," Liah corrected him, playfully slapping at his fingers when he reached over. "I'll have to model it for you sometime." That was something she might've said in the not too distant past just to be a tease, but it made her feel a little warm to say it now, in a slightly different context. She was finding that she really liked it when he smiled like that. She put the top aside and rummaged around some more, until she found the next thing. "Beef jerky," she announced, pulling out a small handful of vacuum-sealed Slim Jims. "All dated to expire next January, so they're still good." She put them down next to the apple and the flashlight on the night-table.
"You do that," Rowan chuckled. "Should have a fuckin' fashion show. And you can totally change in front of me, too." He was still grinning, half amused and half still wicked, because hell yeah. He eyed the beef jerky and added, "But we'll save that for, uh, later. When we really feel like chewing on something." He'd rather stick with canned stuff. And fresh apples. Yum. He focused back on her, then glanced around. Empty suite. Just the two of them. He looked back again. "Anything else, or can I kiss you now?"
Liah could almost see the lightbulb coming on over his head, and it amused her a lot. It was like, Zing! heeeeeey, Juniper's downstairs.... She held up one finger. "Hang on, gotta show you one more thing first." She had no idea if Ro had managed to find condoms anywhere, but if he had, he hadn't mentioned it to her. She didn't know what they'd do after they ran out, but in her opinion, the time to worry about that wasn't right now. She fished in the pillowcase until her fingers closed on the strip of six Trojans-- lubricated, even-- and she pulled them out with a flourish. "Ta-daaaaa!"
Actually, Rowan hadn't. He hadn't even thought of condoms. And even if he had, he didn't have Liah's ninja skillz to hunt some down, and his wings were out of commission for the moment, so he couldn't go hunting outside the hotel. So when she pulled them out, he blinked a few times, then the grin came back-- if anything, worse than before. Or maybe better, depending on what you thought about it. "Well. That is a great find. I think that kinda means I do gotta kiss you, now." He shifted, getting a knee under him and leaned over towards her.
Liah smiled, her expression coy, as she put the condoms on the night table; hopefully she'd remember to hide them somewhere before Juniper came wandering along and tried to make water balloons out of them or something. Almost leisurely, she pushed the pillowcase, still laden with miscellaneous clothing items she'd found, out of the way. She knew as well as he did that moments alone were to be savored, since there didn't seem to be too damn many of them. "Yeah, you probably should," she agreed. "God, hurry up, what're you waiting for?" Mischief glimmered in her eyes.
"Brat," he told her, but it was quietly and obviously teasingly, as he scooted the rest of the way over to where she'd flopped, folding his wings loosely behind his back, and found her mouth with his. He supported himself up with one hand, so the other could come up to her cheek and slide into her hair. It was a gentle kiss-- for now. It wouldn't stay that way. Rowan wasn't a tender-kisser type, especially not when he knew Verity and the kids could come back at any time.
"You love it," Liah replied smugly, but then his mouth was on hers, and she'd much rather kiss than talk at the moment. She didn't mind the slow and easy start to the kiss, but she wasn't much of the soft and sweet type, herself, and it didn't take long for her to intensify it, to open her mouth to his and completely lose herself in how it felt and how he tasted. He made her heart beat fast, almost right away, and she wondered if he could tell. Man, who cared that they didn't have TV? This was fast becoming her favorite leisure time activity.
She was on his wavelength, all right, and he met her tongue with his, more urgently than before. He scooted over a little further, using the hand in her hair to pull her closer, pull himself closer in, and draped a wing over her as he pressed down. Maybe he wasn't on top of her yet, but he'd get there eventually. Right now, he just worked his mouth to hers and brushed her hip and thigh-- her good one, not the bike-torn one, even though that was proooobably almost healed by now-- with his feathers.
Liah's injured leg was the least of her worries. She'd been putting aloe on it every night, and it didn't hurt at all anymore. Even if it had, she wouldn't have let it stop her from doing this. There wasn't anything shy about her, and when Rowan adjusted his position to get closer to her, she slid herself closer to him, hooking one leg loosely around his. The feel of the feathers brushing the bare skin of her thigh sent goosebumps shivering over her, and she clutched him a little more tightly. Eventually she had to break for air, but she didn't make any effort to move in the slightest, just nuzzled at his jaw with her lips as she breathed in.
Rowan, on the other hand, had plenty of air, even if he was breathing a little hard anyhow. Mutating and learning to flying had left him with an increased capacity, and besides, he was a teenage boy. He could make out for hours. When she broke for air, he settled down more firmly with her, one hand now working its way up her shirt and the other under her, now, where he had finally mostly reached that aimed-for "on top of" position, his legs tangled up with hers and his hip up against the side of hers. His lips worked his way down her jaw once he realized she wasn't gonna come back immediately, and nipped at the skin of her neck.
Liah had one of her own hands beneath his shirt, pushing it up slightly and trying to ponder the best way to get it off of him. The wings, as awesome as she thought they were, made undressing somebody much more complicated. She kept getting distracted by where his hands were going, and when he bit her neck-- just hard enough to be exciting and to definitely get her attention, but not too hard-- she wrapped the leg she had around his more tightly and balled up the material of the shirt in her hand. "How does this come off?" she wanted to know, not seeming to have the brain capacity right then to figure it out.
"Buttons," Rowan said shortly, liking how she shuddered at the bite and nuzzling into the spot to kiss it. "In the back, under the-- ugh, I'll get it." He pulled back a little, legs still tangled but pulling his hands away, to reach around behind him and undo the buttons that kept the shirt from flapping around his wings. "Fucking wings, getting in the goddamn way all the time...."
"The wings're hot," Liah said, unable to help being amused by his little fit of pique about them. She didn't laugh, though, because she didn't want to either piss him off or distract him from getting that shirt gone. "Sexy, 'specially when you don't have a shirt on." She'd drawn a lot of winged creatures in the past, but she couldn't have said she had a fetish for them or anything. But they looked good on Ro, and she felt a little shiver move all through her when she thought about seeing him with nothing on except for them. Her own tank top was pushed midway up her stomach, and she watched him through her lashes as she asked, "Want me to take mine off, too?"
"Uh." For a second Rowan blinked at her, his shirt in his hands now, at her offer. It struck him that this was Liah who was suggesting they get naked together, who he had been friends with for years and who he had never really even thought about sex with before the past few weeks. It blew his mind, a little bit, and he grinned at her, his smile a mix of wolfish intention and amazement. "Can I help?" he suggested slyly, and tossed his shirt aside to lean down and run his hands slowly up her stomach.
True, they'd only been besties up until just recently, but the situation had changed. Liah didn't want to have sex with him because he was hot and because he was there-- although he was both of those things-- but because he was Rowan. That was a fairly big difference from her usual method of operations. His smile made her smile, too, and she propped herself up a little, nodding to him. "Yeah, you can help." It was hot out, and stuffy in the hotel, and she didn't have anything on under the tank top, which he'd find out for sure once he pulled it over her head.
"Let's get you naked, then," Rowan grinned, leaning in to kiss her, though not as deeply as before, as he slowly ran his hands up over her breasts-- which, uh, hey, had no bra on top of them!-- and taking the shirt with him. He had to stop there, surprised and a little amused, and added, "Well, half, anyway." His smile was more personal, anticipatory, and coy when he finished, "You gonna help me get this off, or this my job all the way?"
All the way naked would be even better, but she'd take half for now. You had to start somewhere. Liah smirked at him and sat up enough to get hold of the hem of the tank top and pull it over her head. "How's that?" she asked, lying back again and taking hold of his shoulder to pull him back down to her. She wasn't really the type of girl who got embarrassed about being naked -- in this case, halfway-- in front of a guy, because she had a pretty fine body if she did say so herself, but there was a tiny part of her who thought that it should be a little strange to be doing this with Rowan. It wasn't, though, not to her, at least, and she wanted to feel his bare chest against hers right then. For starters.