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He wraps his arm around her shoulders, taking care not to trap her hair beneath the weight of it. It's nice just to be close and reasonably sure they're just themselves after weeks of interference. "I discovered our contract renewal notice somehow didn't make it to us. We're technically illegal. Would you like for me to fix that?" It's almost tongue-in-cheek. He's not expecting a no, yet he made the offer to do the renewals. It's the polite thing to ask.

He nuzzles into her hair, eyes half closed. There's a temptation to put off anything else. He won't. He's too determined to order everything in a way that works for all involved. Being lazy about communication in favor of affection won't help that at all.

Whatever she may have been anticipating dissipates in the wake of his revelation - it speaks to how distracted she’s been, or they both have, that such a thing genuinely hadn’t crossed her mind until now, and her eyes widen in mock concern before she inclines forward, bracing a hand against the top of his leg. “You’d best do so. I never would have settled for being an illegal mistress, and I won’t tolerate it now.”

She closes her eyes in the interim, though, a brief hum escaping her as his nose finds a place in her hair. She knows how fond he is of it worn down, brushed sleek, and she reaches up to run her fingers against the slope of his jaw, an absent touch. “Was there more you wanted to speak on, my dear?”

Dear. Well. That does something to him. He can feel it all over his face and wonders just how foolish his expression has grown. "Yes," he says, his other arm crossing him so he can hold her and squeeze her in close. "First, am I renewing for another three months, or longer?" He determined from the beginning to leave that up to her, knowing how she felt about it from her last loss. There's nothing about that in the bond besides genuine curiosity and a willingness to yield to her desires.

"Secondly, I've spoken to Steven and Marc. I have permission to share with you what I couldn't before, and I hope that after I've shared it, it eases your mind." There is also a third. However, he doesn't want to get ahead of himself.

If he constructs a faulty foundation, anything he attempts to build on it will never hold. He's patient, giving her time to answer and say or ask anything she will. His focus is in close. Gaze likely softer than he realizes.

She’d issued the remark casually, almost without thought, but only after does she realize the impression it’s left on him, and as he draws her in, she slips an arm around his middle, holding herself to him in turn. She tips her head back and regards him from that angle, a thoughtful look in her gaze. “You’ve considered it, I think,” she murmurs. “Longer.” And she can’t pretend she hasn’t done the same, that the thought of having this discussion after another three months would bring her to the same conclusion again and again.

The notion of the other subject prompts her smile to fade, but only because she’s called almost instantaneously to the most recent memory she has of one of those men — what had transpired between them, a conflicted flicker across her thoughts, but she tempers it down. This doesn’t feel the right moment to mention it, but neither does she possess shame; it’s more complicated than that, for all that it still leaves her poring over what it represents now and moving forward.

“They gave you permission to divulge it to me, I imagine. Whatever it may be.”

"Yes, I've considered it," he admits readily. His smile deepens at her answer. There's no disguising his satisfaction, not that he'd try. "Longer then." He tangles her hand in his to lift and brush a kiss along her knuckles.

There's a questioning look at her change in expression, a pause long enough for her to speak into if she chooses. When she doesn't, he continues. "They did. Otherwise I would not. I gave my word." It's sacrosanct to him.

He keeps her hand, thumb slow over her knuckles although he can barely feel it. In her time any theories of psychology were in their infancy. No sense in overly complicating this. If she wants more specific details, she can ask, and he'll do his best to answer. "Marc and Steven are two people occupying the same body, not brothers as they've told most people here. The only reason I know this is that I first met Steven when I was hunting in the park. His behavior was so erratic that I read his mind, only to discover a completely separate personality there. He wasn't talking to himself as I imagined. He was talking to Marc." He stops there for now, imagining this alone may lead to some questions.

There are some sentiments they don't need to express aloud anymore, not with one another; just that single word and she has the assurance she needs that this is what they both want in consenting to make it a more permanent arrangement. Beyond the bureaucracy aspect, of needing to remember a renewal date every three months, it's another form of assurance that she's content where she is — and quite frankly, the thought of contracting with another has never even crossed her mind since they began, even if they've had the occasional moment of conflict. That, she thinks, has had little to do with the contract itself and more to do with the intricacies of their connection.

But it's a thought that can be abandoned, or at least set aside for the time being, when the conversation shifts to another topic — not that she's certain she could have room in her mind for holding anything else once he reveals what he does to her.

"Both of them?" she murmurs, gaze shifting from Grayson's face to roam to a more distant point; she's thinking back, now, on all the times her path has crossed with Steven's, or more recently Marc's, and some of it is beginning to crystallize more distinctly in her memory. "Does that mean that one is still always... present in that consciousness, even if the other might be in control of the body itself?" In other words, had Steven been aware of what had happened between her and Marc in the fog? She'd had no impression of it at the time, but that's because she hadn't known what to look for, specifically.

He shakes his head. "Rarely. Sometimes, but to do so takes a lot of effort and energy for the one who isn't controlling the body at the time. Usually, when one is awake, the other is either asleep or...existing in a construct of the mind separated from the senses of the body."

He realizes he probably ought to go into at least the rudiments of how this happens given her history with possession. His brow pinches slightly. "It's a rare psychological condition, an early childhood trauma response in which a whole psyche fragments into alters who take on separate lives, memories, and identities of their own. It's why Steven has that strange accent. He believes he's from England when in reality he's not. There's a third that both of them are barely aware of, a core of anger who only comes out when they face a mortal threat. It's important not to trigger that one because they're also an avatar of the Egyptian God Khonshu. The powers the body wields when that ability is triggered could kill you." They could potentially kill him, too, if they got the jump on him, but he has powers of his own she doesn't yet.

"This condition is born of indescribable psychological pain and stress. I don't know what the triggering circumstances were. I've never asked, but Marc is the one who carries the burdens of those memories, leaving Steven free to believe he lived a happy childhood. The night of therapy, they drugged Marc to prevent him from switching, forced him to stay to the fore and discuss things that distress him. These fractured psyches are more fragile because they don't have access to the wholeness of their minds. He was put at my table. I couldn't pour him into a cab at the end of that and just send him home alone." It still angers and distresses him to think of that night, but it's a relief to be able to tell her the full truth of it. It had also distressed him to have her think he'd gone off for some mere tryst rather than come home to her when she might also have experienced unpleasantness.

"In his world and mine, this condition isn't well understood. A lot of misconceptions and prejudices surround it, which is why they maintain the ruse they're twin brothers and why we must keep their secret. I'm...grateful...they gave me permission to tell you this, because I don't like how it feels to keep secrets from you when we've been so open in all else. It has been a heavy burden since that night." He wasn't fully aware of how heavy until this moment when it's finally lifted from his shoulders. That she'll be discreet too he has no doubts.

It's not relief that slips into her emotions, necessarily, but more of an understanding — that when she is dealing with one of them, the likelihood that the other is present as well is very slim. Then again, based on the impression she'd gleaned from being in both of their presences, there's no possibility for her to mistake one for the other now, not when Marc is every ounce the stronger, weighted persona in contrast to Steven, who had been more tentative from the start.

She dwells less on the notion of the circumstances that may have created the fractures within the mind and more on the subject of the Egyptian god that has some hold over its parts — the name Khonshu does not ring a bell, although she cannot help but spare a brief thought towards her dear friend Mr. Lyle and his intricate knowledge of the deities of that time. "Then I suppose they and I have more in common than we ever thought we would," she admits. "A member of the Egyptian divine once attempted to snare her hooks in me when my soul was most vulnerable to possession. Perhaps Amunet would have succeeded in her task had another not been more persistent in his desire to consume me."

She's far removed from the night of that seance and all that had followed — but more importantly, however, it's the new context she now holds about what had kept Grayson away that night that delivers a fuller picture of the circumstances. "I understand," she murmurs, glancing down at her hands before one takes hold of his, as instinctive as it is an effort made to ground herself to the present rather than slipping too far into memories conjured by these unexpected commonalities.

"It truly did weigh you down to keep this from me, didn't it?" It's a rhetorical question when she already knows the answer, but now she only feels sympathy for the state he'd been placed in — wanting to be honest with her but contained by his responsibility to another, a position she has been in herself more than once before. She can practically sense the burden of it lifting off of him now, as she ducks her chin enough to meet his gaze, to utter the words with quiet conviction. "Their secret was yours, and now it is mine, never to be divulged to another. You, and they, have my loyalty in that."

Is it the way of all gods, he wonders, to strike at mortals when they're vulnerable? To claim them when they have little hope of resistance? It angers him to think of her toyed with so, just as Marc had been. His brows pinch tighter at this new knowledge. The goddess in question was never known to be malevolent... He lets it go. She didn't claim her. The one who did made her suffer but also honed her strength and was ultimately thwarted if not entirely defeated.

Her hand is little more than pressure. He drops his gaze to cement his awareness of the hold. This, too, is a relief, driving away the final tattered shadows of their quarrel that night, although a shelf alcove remains empty of the vase he'd shattered and has yet to replace. "It did. It gave the appearance I had one thing to hide when in reality it was something else I couldn't speak of." He squeezes her fingers in the promise. Thank you. The telepathic communication drags the emotions attached in its wake, gratitude and love for her both, surety that her word is her bond.

"I love these men in different ways." He meets her gaze and holds it. "I couldn't explain to you how or why it happened any more than I can explain how or why the moment I saw you, I knew you were important. When I met them, they were prey, and I was unconscionably cruel to Steven in subsequent encounters." The sharp shame of it sizzles through the bond at the mere mention.

"It's an agony to be forgiven that which you yourself find unforgivable. To be what I am and encounter people so kind that nothing I am or can do can stand against it. I experienced that with you, too. That night." He doesn't have to clarify what he means, the night he came close to killing her the first time not to sire but simply to take, a sacrifice to his self loathing.

"Marc hated me for it. And I was contemtuous of him for that, a contempt that covered my shame, something I felt before this change in me but couldn't admit or accept. It was at the party that suddenly shifted on its axis, and I found myself face to face with a mirror of my own self-loathing in him. And this...this moment of grace where we both were falling and caught each other instead of tearing into the jugular. It soured almost immediately. We parted on bitter, angry terms, but it was a burr under my skin. A failure. A...a fault I couldn't let go. We met again when I didn't know if you were coming back to me whole or broken. Perhaps some vestigial humanity in me understood vulnerability was the only path to honesty for me. It's exceedingly rare in my existence I've been understood instinctively. It's what I found in Marc and he in me." It's why none of this could ever be a threat to her, because she understands him, too. Accepted him from the beginning.

"Steven fell in love with me. He annoyed me so much at times, always with the questions and impatience. During Tumenalia he found me caged like an animal, so close to just the monster in me he had every reason to believe I'd attack him as viciously as I had before. He extended his hand anyway. Freed me with a key. Took me home. Cleaned me up. Took no advantage when he had all the power, and I had none. Treated me like I... Like I could be someone who deserved such kindness. Androcles to my lion. So somehow this silly, innocent creature is under my skin, an iron backbone under the softness. No threat to you or to us but important. Beloved, and now you have the full truth of everything, both what I sought to hide for their sakes and would never hide for anyone's. I only needed time to recover from the ordeal of being beholden to the commands of all Crested so that I could speak of it sensibly. Most were not as kind as the two of you."

It's a memory Vanessa hasn't spared much thought for in some time, the fact that the woman who had first introduced herself as Madame Kali, later to be known as Evelyn Poole, had believed her not merely to be the latest potential vessel for Amunet but an incarnation of the goddess herself. Thinking of Marc and Steven now, though, and the piece of them that may be indebted to this Khonshu, leads her to wonder if it's a more significant truth than she ever could have known when it was first proposed to her.

It certainly explains one aspect that she had not quite been able to pin down when she'd fed on Marc, when they'd both been the victims of their most negative instincts with the fog swirling all around them — the taste of his blood, which is likely also Steven's blood now that she understands it, and the depths she'd tasted there, beneath what gave them life and strength.

She can't help but smile, though, the expression adopting a reflective quality when he makes mention of their first meeting and the inescapable nature of what later became this — but the path for him, with each of them, would be markedly different. How could it be anything else, when those attached to each respective link are so distinct from one another?

"It seems that you have something of a habit of being drawn to those who find some way of slipping underneath this exterior of yours," she murmurs, shifting in his embrace until she can notch her arm atop his shoulder, her fingertips brushing at the dark hair growing out from beyond his temple before she lets her touch run more purposefully through the strands. It'll be longer by the time they awaken again, but she doesn't object to this length any less, fingers slipping along the sleek black.

"Whether that be by a more blunt demeanor or simply wearing down your defenses with kindness you fail at being impervious against." It does soothe her, distinctly, to know that he had been cared for during Tumenalia, and if not by her then at least by another, as opposed to someone else who could have manipulated the situation to their own ends. Even the thought of that, as he raises it briefly, makes her proverbial hackles rise, distaste lingering at the mere idea. "Did you mind it, terribly? Being underneath my command?" She had not initiated anything so overpowering as to leave him distressed, or so she believes, but it suddenly occurs to her that she has not asked him how he felt about the experience where they're concerned, and now she wants to know.

"The precious few who manage." There's an undercurrent of emphasis to precious that isn't verbal at all. He has few friends in this city he deeply values, fewer yet he considers to be his in a proprietary way that far transcends any implications of objectification. He can count them on one hand with a digit left over. Fewer still he loves with a romanticism that surprises him anew every time he's brought face to face with it, such as now.

She questions, and he strokes her cheek, watches the play of light in the depths of her eyes so close to him. His smile is subtle but lifts into his own instantly, softening sharp watchfulness to abiding regard. "I didn't notice at first."

He shakes his head. Even in hindsight it's impossible for him to pick out the difference between unnatural command and anything he'd give her freely at any time for nothing more than the asking. "I'm not enamored of the idea of my will not my own, but nothing you asked of me was a burden. Nothing subverted my own desires. When I sired you, I determined that everything I am or have would also be yours. That designation had no power with us because there was nothing to transform, and you would never turn my devotion to a leash or a lash."

No more than he would hers. In this moment, he can acknowledge that he fears himself less than he sometimes believes. That history is not repeating itself. That it will not. He won't allow it.

“Oh, believe me, I know it’s not a task easily achieved by any means,” she’s quick to declare, expression schooling into something as teasing as it bears notes of unflinching honesty. He hadn’t proven himself a man who was conveniently known, and even now she’s not certain whose resolve had crumbled first out of the two of them with regard to this partnership, or perhaps it had happened simultaneously, twin revelations taking place so close to one another that they couldn’t distinguish them as ever being apart.

She presses her lips together in a soft line; the truth of the matter is that she hadn’t noticed anything was amiss either, at least not right away, which speaks to the tenor of what they’d established but also the type of authority she would wield if given the chance — nothing beyond his own capabilities, but still pleasurable for them both.

“Good.” It’s all she can say, at first, at the confirmation that he hadn’t felt unsafe or even mildly uncomfortable beneath her hand, save at the notion that he didn’t possess full control of himself. “There is nothing I would do unless I were absolutely sure it was what you wanted too. Which is not to say I haven’t been thinking about the intricate ways in which we might make use of the club’s various offerings, of course.”

A chuckle briefly punctuates her words, but her face sobers as she looks to him again. “Even as you take the necessary steps to renew our contract on a more permanent basis, you have me beyond their designations and rules. More than submissive, more than lover. All I am is simply… yours, without need of definition.”

"You know that, do you?" There's a teasing lilt at the end. "You, who sussed my most closely guarded secret almost from the moment paint touched flesh? You, who grew vexed with my dire warnings the very first time I appeared on your doorstep like an omen blown in on the first chill breeze of autumn?" Deliberately overwrought descriptions, each one accompanied by a curve of lips he's powerless to suppress despite his efforts. "I'd have posited there was nothing I could keep from you even before the bond, whether I wished it or no. The risk of courting a witch's affections." The wider smile has stopped threatening, revealing itself in full.

It lingers as she speaks of the club's offerings. "They'll bear testing. If they can withstand our strength..." He lifts his brows.

Ultimately, the only answer he has for her is a kiss. His holding back in quiet recovery from his ordeal is over. There's a sense of multiple knots in him untying. Each movement of mouth, the distant sensation of pressure of lips on lips, the intimate slip of tongue, furthers the impression that he's fully with her again. He'd know the truth in her words without her being such an integral part of him. With that fact, it's everything.

He draws her down with him to settle in the bed so that when torpor comes, they're not oddly akimbo. "You remind me why 'always' is such a siren's song. I didn't think I'd ever hear it again. I thought it would forevermore be a word that tasted of ash and regrets." Even knowing it can't last, he's able to indulge the hope it might. It's the gift of beginnings.

She gives voice to a quiet hum as if recollecting those precise moments herself — and to an extent she is, revisiting them in her mind's eye as his words paint the illustration even more vividly, though with the type of flowery language that indicates a total lack of solemnity by extension. She hasn't made any attempt to suppress her smile now, something broad and overtly fond, as her eyes search his face. "At the time, it did seem as though you were being rather overdramatic," she murmurs, feeling no need to speak any louder than that hush while they're in close proximity. "Or I was simply too stubborn to let you successfully drive me away. I do have a tendency to embrace that from time to time."

Her look grows more conspiratorial, though, a single arch of her eyebrow countering the rise of his. "All the more reason to be... more thorough with them. We wouldn't want to install something that isn't worth the investment in the long run."

She doesn't need the breath, but she draws one in anyway, almost out of habit, though it releases in a sound, an audible sigh, first as his mouth slants over hers and then at the deepening of that kiss, the slow inquiry and response of tongues, each of them refamiliarizing themselves with the other, until he brings her down against the mattress and she stretches out alongside him, fingertips resting lightly against his chest where his robe drapes over his frame.

"It may still be foolish to use it, with the knowledge that nothing is indefinite, even us." Even if she longs to continue in some form of perpetuity, her face turning serious for a brief moment. "But it's an 'always' that is in as much of my power to give as anything else can be, for all that my words are worth. Hopefully more than regrets."

"Overly dramatic? I?" He doesn't try to hold an affronted expression more than a few seconds. "Stubbornness on your part sounds far more likely." He offers it sagely. It's rare he finds himself outright fighting laughter, yet here he is.

"We'll be the most thorough." Likely more than once and likely long after the opening takes away the newness.

He decides the rest of what he wished to broach can wait for another time. They're getting close enough to torpor to feel as though they might not get through the conversation before it hits. He doesn't want that kind of interruption for this. "If I lost you tomorrow, in the end I'd still be left with more than regrets if I could make it through the loss." He feels no certainty in that.

"I'll let you maintain some of your dignity from that time, I suppose, if it makes you feel better. Besides, everything transpired the way that it was meant to, in the end." She settles in against him, her head notching atop his shoulder, her fingers drawing invisible shapes and sigils across the unmoving plane of his chest — and a faint smile lingers behind, even as she starts to feel the pull toward torpor, like a train approaching from a distance while she stands in wait on the platform.

"I don't have much power afforded to me, and likely even less as a submissive, but if this is what I can offer — the security of something permanent, and lasting, where so much can change instantly and without warning — then you have it. You had it even before you asked for it."

The rest she can't necessarily ensure won't occur, but at least in this he has the certainty of her presence where the city's rules are concerned — and even beyond that, where they are. "I've never stopped to dwell on what I would do without you," she says, barely louder than a faint whisper.

"Very generous of you," he says dryly. She's right about the rest of it. It happened as it was meant to. He settles her in his arms. The position is now second nature and difficult to imagine any other way. Funny how that happens when one least expects it.

"I think there's value in creating security for ourselves where we can. This is one thing we at least know the city respects absolutely." It's also unlikely to be altered in any way after the fact.

"One thing about which it's futile to dwell. A true exercise in borrowing tomorrow's trouble for today." He's morbid at times and prone to bouts of brooding, so he doesn't always take his own advice. He tries.

"My gratitude for this, for you, knows no bounds. It makes the vagaries of this place worth it." Since this is the only way they can have one another, the only place it would ever have been possible.

"I have never been accused of anything less," she replies, briefly lifting her head so that her chin docks against his chest, surveying him from that close proximity. There are so many things she barely has to dwell overlong on where they are concerned anymore — the way in which he takes her in his arms being just one of them, not to mention the way she settles there, as though she was always made to be held by him.

"Fair enough. Unless the city spontaneously decides to alter one of our designations and pretend it was always the case, we have given them little reason to find fault with us otherwise." Save for the experience on the pyre, though she suspects it was not something relegated strictly to certain pairs but a more indiscriminate cleansing.

She finally lowers her head again, her cheek turned to his chest, her eyes falling shut as her body establishes an expression of purer repose. If they were ever intruded upon like this, the first impression would be that they are simply deep in slumber, curled together, save for the obvious sign that no breaths are being taken, features slackened and limbs holding no lingering tension. "I'll wait for you to awaken and join me again, my darling," she whispers.

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inbox for duplicity;

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CW: discussion of DID, abuse, switching

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