fembuck | Fic: Open Your Eyes (Rachel/Ivy, The Hollows 2/?)

Title: Open Your Eyes
Author: Janine
Fandom: The Hollows
Pairing: Ivy/Rachel
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I don’t own them.
Summary: Ivy's with Glenn and Rachel's just going to have to learn to live with that. Or is she?
Note: This story is a sequel to my fic “Burning”. You may want to read/re-read that one first before reading this, but it is not strictly necessary to in order to understand what's happening in this story.
Previous Chapters: one

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PART 2

Two Days Later

I stood nervously in front of the kitchen table, surveying with an appraising eye the food spread out over it. There were two pieces of expertly seasoned steak, one rare – for Ivy – and one prepared medium-well for me. There were herb mashed potatoes and home-made gravy. There were buttered and sautéed green-beans, freshly baked dinner rolls, sweet potato soup, and freshly baked corn-bread. There was an apple pie cooling on the counter, and in the freezer was a tub of vanilla ice-cream waiting to melt into the pie in the most delicious fashion for dessert. And finally, to top it all off, there was a large decanter full of body-warm red wine sitting in the middle of the kitchen table.

Everything was just how I wanted it. It was a perfectly baited Ivy trap.

I heard the door to the church open and jumped a little in surprise, even though I had been expecting Ivy to arrive home any moment. During a conversation we'd had that morning she had told me that Glenn was going to be out of town for a few days consulting on a case in Columbus. I immediately saw the opportunity his absence provided and suggested a quiet evening in, just the two of us.

"I'll cook," I had volunteered, knowing that Ivy enjoyed home-cooked meals and that I had been providing less and less of them for her.

She'd looked at me suspiciously, as if she thought I was up to something, but after a moment she nodded and murmured that a quiet evening in would be nice. She told me what time she expected to be back, and I had spent the rest of the afternoon shopping for and preparing dinner.

"Whoa," Ivy exclaimed softly, her beautiful cinnamon eyes widening as she jerked to a stop just inside the kitchen, her gaze focused on the kitchen table.

I turned around at the sound of her voice. The sight of her eased some of the nervousness I'd been feeling for the last few hours and an easy smile touched my lips.

"Hey," I said in an oh-so-suave, super-casual tone of voice, "you're right on time."

"Yeah," Ivy breathed out as her head turned to the side to take in the apple pie cooling on the counter. "I like to be punctual," she continued, her eyebrows furrowing together as she stared at the pie like she had never seen such a invention before. "Are we having guests?" she asked, blinking a bit more rapidly than usual as she turned to face me.

"No," I responded slowly. I was trying very hard not to smile in the face of her befuddlement. "We're having a nice meal and quiet night in, remember?"

"Of course I remember, it's just …" Ivy glanced around the kitchen again and shook her head faintly. "I just wasn't expecting all of this."

I understood her surprise. Usually when I cooked dinner for us it wasn't a grand affair. On more than a few occasions we hadn't even bothered to sit at the table, we had just stood at the large island in the center of the kitchen and eaten over it to protect the floor.

This night was different. I hadn't gone quite so far as to deck the kitchen out in candles to create mood lightening with Sade playing in the background, but I had busted out the china Ivy had 'borrowed' from her parents when we first moved in, which gave the dinner a distinctly fancier feel than the meals we had shared in the past.

"Ah," I drawled smiling, "so she can be surprised," I continued teasingly as I moved towards the table and then picked up the decanter.

"On occasion, very rare and spread out occasions," Ivy responded teasingly, her voice more certain that it had been moments before. She had recovered from her initial surprise and the Tamwood sangfroid was back in place.

I poured her a glass of wine and held it out and she moved towards me to take her.

"Well," I declared she came to a stop beside me by the edge of the table. "Have a seat. We don't want it to get cold."

---

The meal was a delightfully relaxed affair, which was nice. Things could sometimes be uncomfortable and tense between Ivy and I, and I hadn't been sure how she would take the extravagance of the dinner I'd prepared, but after her initial shock she had been quite relaxed.

When we began to eat she asked me about the dishes I had prepared with a touch of amazement. Everything except for the wine had been the meal that her mother always prepared for her on her birthday when she was child. She had told me about it once, shortly after we moved in together, and I had remembered. When I explained she seemed shocked, as if me listening to her when she talked was positively unheard of, but she was pleased and her happiness dissolved any minor irritation I might have felt her flabbergasted reaction.

We talked about the run she had been on that afternoon. It was a case she had been working on for a week and had managed to finally close it that night. Unlike my shunned ass, Ivy was still getting plenty of work which was good for our electricity, cable and water bills, though it did leave me feeling like deadbeat a lot of the time. The excitement with which she recounted the capture stopped me from having those dour thoughts however, and I found myself quite caught up in the tale and the sound of her voice. She had a lovely voice and I very rarely got to hear it uninterrupted for such lengthy periods of time.

As I was moving around preparing dessert, Ivy surprised me by asking about my training sessions with Al. It made her nervous when I was in the Ever-After so we very rarely discussed my time there until it was absolutely necessary. Apparently her curiosity had finally gotten the better of her though, and as we sat down to apple pie and ice-cream I talked to her about the skills I was very slowly developing under Al's often disparaging tutelage.

Ivy was a little more tense than she had been during the beginning of our meal as I talked about Al and the spells I was learning, but the only thing that really provoked a reaction out of her was a mention of Pierce's name, which caused her lip to curl up momentarily revealing a sharp, glinting canine tooth.

"I don't enjoy his company," Ivy muttered when I smiled at her reaction.

"I'm not enjoying it very much these days, either," I replied grimacing a little. The more time I spent around the smug, self-serving, condescending, overly verbose witch the harder I found it to remember why I had ever been attracted to him. I mean, teenage hormones only explained away so much, right?

"At least you don't have to spend twenty-four hours around him once a week," I sighed.

"I thought he was Rachel-candy," Ivy said looking over at me with a touch of surprise.

"Yeah, well. Candy's bad for my teeth," I responded rolling my eyes.

"Not to mention your overall life expectancy," Ivy added, her cinnamon eyes dancing playfully.

I sighed deeply and muttered, "That too." Oh, the trouble I'd gotten myself into because of men. Better not to think about it really.

"Your hair is almost as long as it was when we first met," I said suddenly allowing my eyes to roam leisurely overly Ivy's beautiful oval face and stunningly dark hair.

I desperately wanted to change the subject but what I had said was also true. I'd always loved Ivy's long hair. She looked amazing no matter what she did with it, but I was happy to see the return of her long, flowing locks.

Much better to run my fingers through, and grab onto, I thought as my tongue peaked out to wet my lips.

A mental image of my hand gripping Ivy's hair as she rested between my legs came to my mind and I shifted in my chair as a strong wave of desire thundered through me. Desperate to control the reaction of my body, I began to think about the depleting Polar Bear situation hoping to depress myself enough to calm down my libido.

"I guess it is," Ivy murmured, lifting her hand to playing with the ends of the dark, silky strands.

God, I was so incredibly jealous of her right hand at that moment.

Polar bears, polar bears, polar bears, I frantically chanted as I felt my body responding to the thought of Ivy's silky hair slipping through my fingers.

"I like it long," I breathed out without really realizing what was coming out of my mouth.

Goddman my brain to hell! It wasn't focusing on polar bears at all.

"I mean you always look good," I said straightening up in my seat when I realized what was what coming out of my mouth. "But you look … you know, even more … good, when it's like … long," I finished haltingly, wishing that I was dexterous enough to shove my own foot in my mouth.

Ivy was silent for a moment and I had to struggle hard not to squirm under her impassive gaze.

"Thank you," she murmured lowly a few seconds later.

I released a breath I didn't know I had been holding. I was relieved that she wasn't going to call me on the ridiculous stream of words that had just flowed from my mouth. But I was beyond relieved that she hadn't seemed to pick up on my earlier … uh, 'response' to the thoughts I'd had about her hair. Ivy usually didn't miss my biological reactions to her and I was thankful that for once my imbecility seemed to have distracted her enough for my spike of desire to slip past her unnoticed.

My relief didn't last for long.

"Rachel," Ivy began soberly as she swirled her spoon around on her plate in the melted remains of her ice-cream. "What are you doing?"

I looked up at her and found that her eyes were narrowed and focused on me with an intensity that I hadn't seen all night.

So she had picked up on the brief spikes of desire.

FML.

I licked my lips nervously and turned to look around me as if I was checking to see if there was a bubbling cauldron somewhere that I had failed to notice.

"What do you mean?" I asked innocently a few moments later.

"This dinner," she breathed out, "the compliments," she continued referring to the fact that I had managed to compliment her outfit, her perfume, her new boots, and her cat-like agility since we had sat down. "What's it all about?"

This was it, this was my chance to tell her that I realized I'd been a complete boob in the past, but that I'd been de-boobed and was ready to accept my feelings for her and her feelings for me.

This was my chance to tell her that I had been wrong to push her away and that for a while now all I wanted to do was pull her closer to me.

This was my chance to tell her that I loved her and not in a sisterly way, and that if she could find it in her heart to forgive my idiocy that I wanted to love her, with everything that I was and everything that I had, for evermore.

"What's what about?" was what I said however, and then I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. "Can't we just have a nice home-cooked meal together and a quiet evening in catching up without me being up to something?"

Take a good look folks. The creature that stands before you is the sadly common Cowardicelopithicus. These creatures are most commonly seen: turning their heads away from homeless people asking for change, breaking up with their significant others by text message at coffee-shops, and passive aggressively complaining to anyone who will listen about annoying things people they know do instead of actually talking to the person they have a problem with because it would be uncomfortable.

"Certainly we can," Ivy responded holding my gaze unwaveringly, "but we don't."

I opened my mouth to protest the statement but thought better of it and closed my mouth.

The truth was that Ivy was right.

We'd had meals together before and often talked while we were eating, but we hadn't sat around the table with a full spread and spent hours just talking for a long time. We had tried at first, but such nights usually ended up with one of us setting the other off causing the meal to come to an abrupt halt. At that point one of us, usually Ivy since I'm the great provoker, would leave the room or the church altogether, and that was a wrap. Eventually we took to having quick meals together before quickly taking off on a run, or to an appointment or to take care of some other daily task in an attempt to avoid the small scale domestic warfare too much time around each other usually led to.

And quiet evenings in with just the two of us, well they'd been as extinct as the dodo for quite some time. When we first moved in together it had been nice to hang out and watch movies or television together, or even to just lie around reading while music played from the stereo system. But as the tension had mounted between us and my responses to Ivy began to torment her vampire instincts more and more, those evenings spent alone together had become a thing of the past. If Ivy and I spent more than half an hour in the living room together it meant that there were other people around to chaperone, it meant that Jenks was flying around or that Keasley had stopped by, or that the pixie children were watching videos or that – more recently – Glenn was there.

Ivy and I were almost never alone together for extended periods of time and if somehow we forgot to be anxious about being alone together and hung around the same place for a while we avoided serious conversation like it could give us syphilis.

"Well," I said slowly, "maybe we should."

"There's a reason we don't," Ivy responded sadly. "Things get … complicated when we do."

"It doesn't have to be complicated," I whispered blinking a few times to try and clear my moistening eyes. "I don't want it to be complicated anymore."

"What we want and what is are often two entirely different things," Ivy replied, her voice cracking just the tiniest bit as she spoke revealing the strong emotions that lay beneath her seemingly calm surface.

"Maybe so," I admitted, acknowledging the fact that in both of our lives what we wanted often had no bearing on how the things actually worked out. "But sometimes … sometimes they're the same," I continued, "They could be the same."

Ivy sucked in a deep breath and looked away from me, the curtain of her dark hair falling between us. It had been a while since I had seen her do that. When we had first moved in together she had often used her hair as a shield against me, but cutting her hair had forced her out of the habit. It seemed that it was returning with her longer hair, but she was out of practice and didn't move quickly enough to hide her rapidly darkening eyes.

"What is this, Rachel?"

She sounded drained, exhausted, as if she were Atlas and the weight of the world was resting on her shoulders. It was a tone that I hadn't heard from her in months, I realized. It was a tone I hadn't heard since I had stopped fantasizing about her biting me while in her presence. When I had first started thinking about being bitten after our encounter in the van, Ivy had been sharp with me, barking out 'stop' in an irritable tone whenever my mind wandered. Near the end however, she had simply sounded fatigued. She had been worn down and had nothing left to fight me with, and it was that defeated and weary tone I had just heard.

I screwed my courage to the sticking place and straightened up in my chair, then firm in purpose I stated, "It's me paying attention, finally."

She kept her face hidden from me, but I continued to stare at the dark curtain of her hair and forged ahead, somehow knowing that if I blew this chance with her I would not get another one.

"I know my timing sucks, really I do," I said scrubbing my face with my palm. "It's taken me far, far too long to figure out how I feel and what I want, but I have figured it out."

Her hands were resting palm down on the table, pressing against the flat surface, tensed, ready to push off and dart out of the room at any moment. The sight made me close my eyes against the tears welling up in them and I had to take a few deep breaths before I was able to reach out and place my hands on top of hers.

"I've thought about this, about how to say it … so many different ways to say it … but I'll be brief and to the point," I said to the dark screen blocking her face.

I wanted to be artful about this, but I'm not an artful person. Besides, even if I had the poetry, I knew that it wasn't the time for it. I was riddled with anxiety and I could feel how tense Ivy's hands were beneath me. She didn't need art from me at that moment, she didn't need poetry. She just needed to know how I felt. She needed to know that I loved her. The similes and metaphors could come later when she was resting contently in my arms.

"I love you," I told her in a voice that shook so badly I almost didn't recognize it as my own. "I want all of you," I declared willing my voice to settle and firm, "everything. And I freely give you all of me."

Ivy's hands jerked under mine and she angled her head even further away from me.

She drew in a deep breath, sounding almost pained.

"Are you …"

"I'm certain," I interjected, knowing instinctively what she was going to ask. "I'm certain," I repeated, my voice rough with emotion. "Ivy …"

I trailed off after saying her name, uncertain what else I could say to convince her that this wasn't a trick or another one of life's disappointments.

Her hands disappeared from beneath mine and I blinked, releasing twin tears from the corners of my eyes wondering if I had finally pushed her too far. But before I could even turn to try and call out to her, I felt her beside me.

I tilted my head up so that I could see her face and blinked again, releasing another stream of tears. She reached out and cupped my face in her warm, strong hand. Her thumb swiped at my cheek clearing away the tears streaming down it. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. I wasn't sure whether she was scenting my emotions or just trying to get a handle on hers, but before I could give it too much thought I felt myself being lifted gently into the air before she settled me down on her lap.

I wanted to say something beautiful as we sat there gazing at each other, but pretty words weren't my thing. I was a woman of action, so I acted.

I brought my hand up to her face and stroked her cheek lightly, reverently, then I leaned forward and brought our lips together, pouring every desperate, violent, tender emotion I felt for her into the kiss. My hands gripped at her tightly, and I could taste the salt of my tears in my mouth as we kissed, but I did not let her go.

Eventually the need for air forced us apart, but not for long. I breathed in just enough to keep my head from spinning, and then my lips were back on Ivy's, drawing a surprised gasp from her before her hands were tangling in my hair and she was kissing me back just as ardently and desperately and passionately as I was kissing her.

When the world stopped spinning and I was able to focus again, Ivy's hands were on my shoulders holding me where I was, her entirely black eyes watching me intensely enough to sear even as they shimmered wetly with tears waiting to be shed.

"Everything?" she asked, and even in my state of distraction I could hear the fear and apprehension in her voice.

"Everything," I confirmed without pause.

Her eyes fluttered shut and the tears that had been shining in them finally slipped down her cheeks. I wrapped my arms around her and drew her into my body, cradling her against me as I pressed my lips to her temple, rocking her as I would a baby.

"I love you Ivy," I whispered into her hair, knowing that even though my voice was muffled she would be able to hear me. "I really, really do. I love you, so much."

She wrapped her arms around me pulling me tightly against her and nuzzled her face against my chest.

"I love you too," she breathed out, warm breath tickling my clavicle in the most delicious and comforting way before she pressed her lips to my skin in a kiss so tender and so sweet I feared it would stop my heart.

"Oh, Ivy," I whispered longingly, stroking her face lightly.

I loved being wrapped up with her, but I desperately wanted to kiss her again. Everything about Ivy oozed sex and having kissed her once before I knew that she was beyond good at it, but our experience in the sanctuary hadn't prepared me for the experience of kissing her when we both wanted it and were both anticipating it.

I took her face in my hands and lifted it. I held her eyes with my own for a moment that was an eternity and then I leaned down and pressed my lips against hers once more, leaving my yearningly sighed words as the last either of us spoke for quite a while.

To be continued …

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

gochateau.livejournal.com

*dreamy sigh*

Oh, Rachel... you finally did something right. When you act like THAT I kind of like you again. Also, I love that this is still 2/? mwuahah

That wasn't a mistake, right? Right?! This made my day <3

From:

Best Damn Tapper!

Fic: Open Your Eyes (Rachel/Ivy, The Hollows 2/?)

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