He breathes out a laugh, a brief sound, before undoing his own fly and shimmying out of his slacks. She pushes herself up, fitting her hands around his wrists, though her arms shake. "I wasn't done," she whispers, her voice like a rasp, and his face goes slack with the realization.
She straddles him, then sinks down onto him, and he moans again, his eyes squeezing shut. "Fuck," he strangles out, then says something that sounds absolutely filthy in a language she doesn't know, but he's just whispering, as if he isn't there, and she thrusts at him again, and again. "Fuck."
Afterwards, heart pounding and body feeling like it's floating, he nuzzles against her, his arms warm against the overactive air conditioning.
She stares up at the mirror on the ceiling, admiring the slant of his ass. "I don't like being passive." She blurts out.
He sighs into her neck. "I'm gathering that." His arm tightens around her. "Most places where another person could help, where you could help, it'd be bad for other people to see your face. To know you exist, I'm not ...I'm not just being an ass."
He curls himself around her, pressing against her as if he is a drowning man in need of a lifeboat.
"I'm going to see male strippers today, are you going to be weird about it?" Her mouth says, outside of her control, and she winces at the phrasing.
A laugh bubbles out of him, so it feels like a triumph. "Don't bang them and we should be good."
She nods, even though the mirror shows his eyes are squeezed shut. "Banging strippers in Vegas seems like a bad idea."
He hmmmmmms, and it's soft and nice, like he usually isn't, and she just wants to close her eyes into the feeling and the sound. "Strippers are one of the better things to happen in this last century." He murmurs. "Gods only know why I would fault you for going to see strippers."
There's a breath, a moment with that statement, where Aimes marvels at how fundamentally different it is than what Rocky would say. "My ex hated me doing anything like that."
His muscles tense, before he pushes himself off the bed, face as if he tastes a sour lemon. "Cause he was shitty.” He gestures with his shirt before shrugging it on. “Like how he was even shitty at that coffee shop.”
That statement, coupled with the thick as fog Russian accent, makes her head light. "You really had me followed back then?"
He pauses, putting on his pants and looking all too normal and all too human. "I was keeping track," he says, petulant. "I didn't have anyone follow you."
She rolls over so she's on her stomach, still naked, the soft sheets almost too much against her nipples. "How, though?" she asks, honestly curious. "I ...how? I don't think I saw you?"
A sad look creases over his face before it's smoothed out. "I have ways of keeping track that don't need me to be actually there," he says, fauxly flippant. "I may be a hell of a lot more powerful than you actually seem to realize."
She shrugs. "And?"
"Do you need food?"
She nods, more out of curiosity than anything else. "I'd prefer to not go to Poland, though."
The corners of his lips tug up. "I was thinking someplace nearer." He tosses her top at her, and he suddenly has the awkward movement of a man not used to being this close to a woman. "Unless you need something fancy." Smooth, he leans over, placing a chaste kiss on the small of her back.
She turns over, and he presses a kiss right above her navel, tickling a bit. "I take it I have to have clothes on?"
He smiles into her skin. "Sadly, yes."
He takes her to a tiny burger place that, but for the Texas flag hanging behind the bar, could've been right off the Strip.
At her glance at it, he shrugs. "We're a few states over, I think."
The tables have been carved into many times, the wallpaper has tits on it, and Aimes kinda adores it. "You don't strike me as a burger person." She raises an eyebrow at his suit.
No one else pays him much attention. "I fit in everywhere," he declares, lofty. "Besides, anyone can fit in here." And suddenly, the thick Russian accent drops to fit into a perfect Texas drawl, and she can't help but laugh in surprise.
"So can you just...do that?" They squeeze into a booth and she nudges him with her elbow. "Any accent? Is that part of the whole.... thing?" She gestures, vague, at all of him.
"No, that's comes from being over dramatic and having over 300 years of practice." He throws his arm around her shoulder, and is immediately so very Texan looking that she has to blink. "My brothers are much shittier at it."
Without them ordering, a very busty waitress drops off two burgers and tater tots for them, and Aimes marvels a bit more. "Do you just...know every restaurant?" Even though it's maybe 10:30 AM in her time, she dives into the burger, because a) it's a burger and b) holy shit does it smell good.
He shrugs, watching her for a few seconds. "It's always good to find places for something to eat where they won't care who you are," he says, soft, and it's another too sincere moment that she raises an eyebrow at him.
"Brothers that shitty?"
"Brothers that shitty who've put out a standing reward for me."
And while it's not precisely new information, she raises an eyebrow. "Trixie said the Russian guy approached her after I left."
"I bet he did," Iakov mutters, before sighing. "He couldn't have known you were mine, he's not that talented, he just thought he could...find something out about someone new."
The burger all but melts in her mouth, and it takes actual effort to not moan about it in his face while he's talking about his brothers. "So...bad luck?"
"Bad luck and them staying all the fucking time in Vegas cause they like to appear important." He grumbles, and the Texan accent slips, just a hair, before returning. "Didn't know I needed to warn you about Vegas. Thought Katya would."
Aimes shrugs, and without them asking the waitress drops off two beers. "She didn't know I was here until she got someone reporting me to her."
Iakov's eyebrows climb, and he scowls for a moment, digging his fingernail into the already chipped booth, before his face clears abruptly. "Did you grow up in Los Angeles?"
She blinks at him around a mouthful of burger. "No? Boston, family's still there."
He nods, as if she was confirming something instead of it being an actual question. "When did you move out?" He sits back, expectant, as if this is much more interesting than, you know, the grand Demigod plan to kill him.
"You sent me the knife, right?" She challenges back, quick.
He nods, as if it was normal. "It's a good knife, and I didn't know how you felt about guns."
Her eyebrows fly up, though the fact that they were in a Texas bar meant that no one paid them any attention. "I'd hope to not need one."
He shrugs, the arm draped over her shoulder briefly tightening. "Ask Katya to take you shooting. She'd enjoy that." And they're sitting so much like a normal couple at this Texas burger and beer joint that she just snuggles back under his arm. For a few seconds it's perfect, the sound of a light rain outside.
Her phone buzzes, and she digs it out of her purse.
TRIXIE (10:45 AM): There's already gay drama and I'm living for it.
Aimes lips pull up into a smile.
AIMES (10:46 AM): Vegas delivers.
"What does that mean?" Iakov rumbles, pressing a kiss into the point where her shoulder and her neck meets.
"It means that her conventions are much more fun than my conventions, and the drama isn't boring."
He hmmmmms and resumes eating, just watching her, and the attention is almost verging on uncomfortable.
And there's something in the way that Iakov looks at her that's deeply familiar, deeply soothing, and deeply unsettling.
Rocky wouldn't look at her, not like that. It wasn't that he was ashamed of sex, but he didn't like putting affection on display, and would often avoid her gaze after fucking. He would claim that it was because PDA's were a blight on society, but it certainly didn't help her confidence.
And now she has a liter
al demigod looking at her as if he wants to fuck her again on the table. A literal demigod who she still, despite having a list of all his crimes against humanity, she knows very little about his personality.
"Is there anything else I should ask Katya about?" she asks, quiet, almost not wanting to break the silence.
He sighs, exactly the reaction she didn't want. "There's just so much," he grumbles. "If I wasn't...if things weren't so dire," he briefly nuzzles the top of her hair, "if things weren't so dire I would take you on a grand tour, introduce you to as many people as I could, show you this side of the world." The arm tightens even further. "But instead it's dive bars in Texas."
While that's a grand, pretty statement, it doesn't tell her anything, and his non-answers and deflections start to grate against her. "So...ask her more general information?"
He slumps. "Ask her about general prophesies around Demi gods and how fucked up they are."
Her phone buzzes, and it's a welcome relief from the tension of his grumpy mood.
KATYA GOVERNMENT (11:01 AM): Are you safe?
A glance at Iakov's face shows his eyebrows mirroring hers.
AIMES (11:01 AM): Yes?
"Yes, you're very well fucking safe right now," he grumbles, and the Russian accent slips out.
Her phone rings. Like, an actual call, with Katya's name and a glass of wine as her picture popping up.
"Um," Aimes says, staring at the screen. "You wouldn't mind?"
He waves his hand.
She clicks accept, and before she can even say anything, Katya's already talking.
"Where are you?"
Iakov can obviously hear everything Katya's saying, so close to the booth. "Um. Texas, apparently."
A quick withdrawal of breath from Katya. "Are you with him right now?" And the veneer of professionalism drops from her voice so quickly.
She glances up and grabs Iakov's gaze. His eyes are hard, his jaw set, a tick in the muscles.
"Yeah, I've been with him all morning." She avoids the obvious impulse to turn away, to step away from the booth and have the conversation in private. "What's going on?"
Katya makes a noise in the back of her throat, garbled over the phone lines, but a noise of distress and dismay. "Aimes, Dave's dead."
For a few seconds, Aimes is sure that she misheard, that that's not what Katya just blurted out, that she heard it wrong, heard the name wrong, heard the word wrong, something. "What?"
Iakov looks away, eyes wide.
The same sound comes through the phone again. "They found his remains this morning, at around 10 AM. It looks, it looks like someone banished him late last night."
"Wait wait wait, banished?" Aimes clutches her purse closer to her, her hands sweaty damp. "I just saw him at the convention, he was..." Her eyes flicker up to Iakov, who's staring out at the bar instead of her.
He was warning her about the necklace, and about people not treating her well because of it.
Slowly, still not looking at her, Iakov grasps her hand, and Aimes is unsure if it's an anchor or a handcuff.
"With what he is, he's a ghost, banishing' basically… he's gone, and he can't come back." Katya says, and her voice rambles, shaky. "Get Jake to bring you back to Vegas."
Iakov jerks, both at the name used and at the order. "What?" he says, loud enough that Katya can hear him. "I'm not someone for her to order me around."
A quick intake of breath from Katya over the phone, before she audibly steels herself over the phone. "Aimes, just..."
The hand on hers tightens, and without even blinking they're back in Aimes’s hotel room. She staggers, dropping her phone, and Iakov turns away and is immediately gone.
She gasps, the air feeling like it's been punched out of her.
"...mes?" Katya's voice says, tinny, on the speaker on her phone, and Aimes scrambles to pick it up again.
"I'm here, I'm here, I'm… back in Vegas and and and… and he's gone?" She takes a deep, shattering breath, "He brought me back, and then left."
She sits, heavy, on the bed, cradling her head between her hands. Of course he left, he got twitchy, he needed to get away, because he's nothing if he doesn't just disappear whenever they're together.
And Dave's dead.
"Aimes?" Katya says, voice quiet and tinny over the phone. "Aimes what happened?"
"He just took me back, then left," she says, again, and the quiet of the room is stark after the soft rain and patter of the Texas bar. "He had taken me for burgers."
"Burgers."
"Yeah." She lays down across the bed, and then curls in on herself, not really wanting to look at herself in the ceiling mirror. "Dave's gone?"
"Dave's gone." A long, heavy silence, with the phone static between them. "Was he with you last night?"
She sucks in another breath. "You think he killed Dave."
"Someone tipped off his brothers." Katya says, her voice soft, with something strange and foreign underneath it. "Dave had a payment from the twins, and then his remains were found. In the same way that...that everyone's been."
A payment from the twins, as if Dave would...would sell her out, would send someone after her who would hurt her, as if he hadn't had her self interest in heart.
Aimes blinks back up at her reflection in the mirror. Her face is sallow and her eyes already puffy, as if knowing that she is about to cry even if she isn't quite there yet. "He was...with me for part." she says, small, and even that feels like a betrayal. "His brother had seen me in a bar, and Iakov texted me to leave, and...and he took me back to my room. And then he...I saw him at dinner, he was watching me, I think..."
"What time was the bar?" Katya snaps out.
Aimes squeezes her eyes shut. "4 PM, I think? Ish? I...I'll look at the texts and tell you the time stamp." She digs the heels of her hands into her eyes, the phone laying on the bed next to her. "Dave told them about me? Why?"
Katya's voice comes back miserable and heavy. "I don't know, Aimes. I don't know."
Tears prickle at the corners of her eyes, and she blinks them back, her appearance in the mirror blurring, then clearing. "He asked who it was, I didn't tell him." She blurts out. "I said you told me not to."
Katya sucks in a quick, panicked breath. "Thanks for letting me know," and her voice is odd, strained against her throat. "I should...I should go. Redo the wards on my place."
Her place, her place, which Aimes has never actually been to, that she keeps secret. For these reasons, apparently. "Iakov said he put up wards on my hotel room, and my apartment."
"Good," she says firmly, then the phone clicks off.
Aimes lets her arm fall next to her on the bed as she stares up, her mind racing and her throat feeling like she's trying to swallow something way, way too large.
She's known Dave for six years now. He's listened to her rant about Rocky, called her for all measures of weird library issues, and...and connected her with Katya. And warned her from the necklace.
Her eyes stray over to where it lays on the hotel dresser, glittering in the light. If Dave had known, just from the necklace, enough to alert --
She can't find it in herself to believe that he had been the one to tell them. Not after he called in Katya, and...and she doesn't know if she actually told him she was going to Vegas. It wasn't exactly something she slapped around the internet, or told everyone at the convention.
Just.
She flicks her phone open again with the swipe of her finger.
AIMES (12:02 PM): I didn't tell him I was going to Vegas.
There's nothing, no response, and she curls up on herself, shutting her eyes.
15
Her door clicks open, and she snaps awake, jerking herself upright.
Trixie stands, her eyebrows raising, at the door. "Did you sleep through the entire morning?" She sets down her purse. "It's like...1:30."
Aimes resists scrubbing her eyes. "Maybe."
Trixie shrugs, smiling, her eyes alight, and Aimes wants to just cry and tel
l her about Dave but, but, but her friend looks so alive and so bright that she just can't. "I have a break until three, let’s get a buffet." She's wearing a suit, and looks way more professional than Aimes feels.
"Do I have to change?"
"Oh hell no, most of Vegas is just waking up, you're cool." Trixie flashes a few shiny coupons in front of her face, too fast for her to read them. "I got comps for Tropicana lunch."
Aimes hauls herself up off the bed, and tosses her hair into a haphazard bun. It's hilariously frizzy, the one tangible proof of the trip to get burgers in the Texas rain and --
She has to take a deep breath, cause for a few minutes it seemed like Iakov was...there. Like she isn't just a hookup and a life insurance. Someone worth taking to hole-in-the-wall burger places for the company.
Trixie gives her a grin, and she's so happy Aimes has to smile back, weak although it is. "There's a guy at my thing that's pretty handsome," she says, voice sing-song.
"I thought all the men here are gay?" She grabs her phone and her wallet.
Trixie shrugs. "I think he also likes women. Also."
Aimes glances at her phone. Two missed texts, during her angst and sadness induced nap.
TRIXIE (1:22 PM): FOODDDDD? Yes?
And
TALL GUY (1:28 PM): I didn't kill him.
A wave of relief hits her as they walk down the hall, followed immediately by a wave of guilt.
AIMES (1:39 PM): Glad you didn't. Sorry about Katya.
TALL GUY (1:39 PM): I'll find out who did.
That is foreboding, but she shoves her phone back in her pocket instead of dealing with it, because she feels distinctly sorry for herself and distinctly like she wants to get hammered and forget this day ever happened.
She settles for minorly buzzed at lunch under Trixie's watchful eye, and the moment she's back at her room she dials Katya.
It rings out, so she texts.
AIMES (3:39 PM): He said he didn't do it.
Marked by the Demigod Page 14
