A/N: Still not sure how I feel about this. Technically, it reads as a sequel to my other story, "Surrender," but that doesn't need to be read. It's simply an aftermath sort of fic to Renard and Juliette spending the night together. Because obviously they haven't suffered enough. xD

Inevitable

The bed he awakens in is not his own. The sheets are softer (flannel), the blankets too heavy, though they are mostly kicked to his feet or thrown haphazardly on the opposite side of the mattress. It's the bed of a happy suburban couple rather than a socialite and it leaves him momentarily disoriented. A glance to the side reveals he is alone though the warmth still hanging onto the sheets suggests his partner had departed only moments earlier.

Renard remains where he is, brushes an exhausted hand over his face. It's the first night in months that he's truly slept (though they have, admittedly, not slept a great deal) and somehow he feels worse for it. There is a sickening shame in knowing he's been overcome by the curse, a self loathing he's come to associate with regret.

He regrets precious little in his life. The prince has done unspeakable things, awful things which would see him damned but he does not regret them. Every life taken had been done with purpose; every woman sacrificed had been for a purpose; every manipulation for purpose.

There had been no purpose to this.

He takes a withering breath, glaring up at the ceiling. The ceiling of a suburban home for a happy little suburban couple. The prince allows his eyes to drift shut again, flashes of the previous night still drifting pleasantly across his awareness. Juliette, pale and beautiful, her green eyes flashing with an odd mixture of relief and sadness. More desire than should be humanly possible. If he focuses, he can still feel her nails scratching down his back, her lips playing across his skin. He can feel her as vividly now as when she was in his arms.

It sends a sickening, unseemly bolt of desire through him, hideous in his intensity. Renard grits his teeth, fisting a hand in the sheets (not his, nothing like him), trying to clamp down on the sensation. In it's worst moments the curse had made these thoughts of her nearly painful, like an annoying scratching along his subconscious threatening to drive him into madness. Now, it is a thousand times worse. Now, there is an impossible pain winging over his senses.

Far off in the distance, from down the stairs, he thinks he hears a muffled yelp, a glass shattering. He's a bastard but he is still a gentleman (though, he supposes, more than a little bitterly, that nobility he's always prided himself over is now in doubt) and his first instinct is to make certain she's alright. Juliette has to be alright. The pain subsides ever so slightly at the mention of her name, a dull, warning thrumming in the back of his head. Still present, but enough for him to stand.

"Juliette..."

He repeats the name as a question. While his voice is lower than usual, tinged by sleep and latent desire, there is no particular regard in it. No emotional connection, no ties to the woman who wears it. It's purely scientific interest. The pain becomes slightly sharper in warning.

He needs, more than ever, to get out of...

Renard grunts in pain, driven to his knees in one smooth move. The sensation hits him like a punch to the gut, somehow physical and mental all at once. The oxygen is driven from his lungs but it's his head that's suddenly killing him, as if someone's twisting a knife in the back of his skull. He bites down hard enough on his lip to draw blood, vision narrowing to one point, coloring dimming and then fading. It feels like dying, like poison, like a thousand other things that he has no place feeling now.

His blood cools in his veins, heart seemingly stopping at the sound that tears up the stairs. Juliette's voice, traditionally soft, consistently even and unphased, is pitched in nothing less than a scream, openly terrified and dripping with pain. And what's worse, he feels it, feels her, almost as if she's dying. His fingers fist ineffectually in the carpet, clenching and unclenching as if seeking some handhold, something to brace himself.

"Sean!"

That voice in the back of his head, the presence so smug, so assured of its victory, smirks. In this strange sort of delirium, he can almost see Adalind's face, the little woman glancing down at him, all pale beauty and sickening self satisfaction. He growls, arms giving way beneath him.

"Sean!"

There is a second, only a second, of relief that accompanies her call, "Juliette." Relief, immediate and profound; he clutches his stomach, winces, "Juliette, I'm coming."

Nothing else matters; he has to get to her. Now.

Worse. They've made this so much worse.

He doesn't know what childish, idealistic, notion they were holding to that made them think breaking this curse would be so simple. That Adalind would simply let them go after such an easy step. That one night would return her memories, sever the connection between them, and everything could start to return to how it was.

The pain does not properly subside as he draws nearer to her. With each step it lessens somewhat but he feels it waiting, just on the edge of his awareness, ready for him should he try to move away.

It had been a slow decay before. They've only managed to accelerate it.

He takes a steadying breath, reaching out to hold onto the stair railing.

His preternatural sense for her has not faded; on instinct, his feet are leading him towards the kitchen. Juliette is slumped on the floor, her back resting against the cabinets, knees drawn to her chest. Her face remains drawn in pain, open confusion clearly evident. She doesn't look up at him when he enters, simply draws her knees a little tighter to her chest, tongue flicking out to moisten her lips. The nervous gesture elicits a feeling of pity he's learned to repress.

Her voice is soft, a little hoarse, and she gestures idly in front of her, staring sightlessly forward, "I broke a cup." He arches a brow, follows her line of sight. The shattered remains of what appears to be a collectors mug are scattered on the pile, intermixed with the brown liquid. He think he's able to pick out a "J" among the glass and a "T" a little further away. Everything else is a mishmash of color, the destruction rendered oddly serene by the oddly comforting smell of fresh coffee wafting on the air, "Nick bought that for me."

Guilt, self loathing, those are natural. Those are his own feelings. The irrational, almost violent, surge of jealousy at even the mention of the other man is not. He takes a seat beside her, ignoring the cool tile licking at the backs of his bare legs, staring at the pool of liquid near their feet, "You remember?"

"Bits and pieces," she frowns, nudging one of the pieces with her foot. She sounds far away again (and he doesn't miss the accompanying flash of pain across her features, punishing her for thinking of anything else), "I saw it at..." a wince or simply concentration, "some stupid little shop. It was the ugliest thing. Even had my name on it. It was spelled wrong."

"And he bought it for you?"

Juliette chuckles to herself, the sound a little wistful as she leans her head back against the cupboards, "It was the first thing he ever bought me. Something about how, years down the line, whenever he found something...ridiculous, something Nick-like, I wouldn't be upset. Because he bought me the damn cup. And nothing could be worse than that."

Renard can't help the smile that tugs at the corner of his lips (grunts to bite back the pain). When he reaches out to touch her, just to rest a hand on her knee, he can proudly say it's him and not the curse. "He loves you, Juliette. More than you know."

"No," she turns enough to flash him a sad excuse for a smile, the expression wobbly and pitiful, dying well before her eyes, "I know exactly how much he loved me."

Jealousy and pain and he's forced to bite down on his lip again, tastes blood for the second time this morning. Juliette's hand curls around his forearm, clutching hard enough that he wonders if her nails haven't broken skin.

Desperation has him reaching out to her, hooking fingers beneath her chin to pull her to him for a quick, awkward kiss. He can taste the coffee still on her breath (a little bitter and painfully domestic) and something else he can't quite put a name to. The pain fades again to a muted hum.

But it's closer this time. He can feel it moving closer every time he touches her, offering relief and running the clock down just a little faster. She leans her forehead against his shoulder, slumping as if the weight hanging around her shoulders has suddenly been yanked downwards. Her green eyes are openly pained.

"Why isn't this gone?" She still isn't looking at him, "It's like...there's something in my head and when I try and think of anything, anything else, there's only," she winces, "You."

"I don't know," For once in his life, he doesn't. The man who has all the answers, who's played every angle, is suddenly left without support. The pressure is building again, the pain threatening to press forward if he doesn't touch her. He needs to touch her; he needs her. His hands remain resolutely at his sides, refusing to take that final step. Still trying to resist, even as it sends (sharper) spikes of pain lancing through his head.

Juliette's fingers are ghosting up his side, sliding around to his back to retrace the lines she left emblazoned in his skin the night before. There's hesitation but she can't stop, "I don't want you." It's impossible to tell if she's trying to convince him or herself.

He can't help that he dips his head, cranes her head back to feather open mouthed kisses along her throat, her shoulder, her chest, "I know."

She fists hand in his hair, mutters something about the length (so much easier with Nick, his hair far longer, a much better handhold; his mind fills in her dialogue insidiously, jealous anger sudden filling him), before arranging herself. The woman doesn't think twice, swinging a leg over his lap to straddle him. The pain flickering across her features is evident, more prominent, than the previous night but buried beneath a more pressing need. A force beyond them that threatens their sanity if they don't act.

And it is an odd sort of notion to the man, that they can simultaneously save and damn themselves. There's a certain elegance to it that he has to admire; he is not too proud to deny that Adalind had planned her revenge masterfully.

He knows the moment they break apart, the pressure will only be more severe. That this feeling will grow, that the pain will continue until it simply kills them. And it will, sooner rather than later.

It doesn't stop him from reaching for her, hands gripping her hips with a bruising strength that makes the small woman yelp. She's wearing his shirt (and nothing else, nothing else between them) and the material falls open in the front, bunches around her waist. There's something sinful about the whole of the image, the wrinkled fabric hanging off her her slender shoulders, that makes him groan, thrusting up into her, entering her in one smooth move. He could almost come at the feel of her, warm and so tight around him.

Juliette yelps again, nails digging at his shoulders, torn between pushing him away and drawing him closer. She settles on the later, nipping at his lower lip, sucking hard enough to leave their embrace tasting of blood; iron and coffee. There's a note of punishment in the whole of things, her hips rocking in a halfway frantic counterpoint to his own thrusts.

Absently, he's aware of the scrape of glass on tile as his foots catches on the remains of the ruined mug.

It only causes her to clutch him tighter, arching her back, drawing his head to her chest. All too eagerly, he follows her lead, painting invisible patterns over her chest, the rise of her breasts. There's an almost sickening satisfaction that floods him at her moan, the way she instinctively tightens around him as he envelops a nipple in wet heat. Nipping and sucking, flicks of his tongue to match the motion of his hips. She lets out a heavy breath, lets her head to lol back. Those green eyes are screwed shut, almost as if she has no desire to see the world around her. There are too many memories and too much guilt and she'll die if she allows herself to think of that.

"Sean," Juliette pants his name, the breathy declaration caught somewhere between revenant and pleading. He jerks her back towards him, thrusting into her with a strength that momentarily jars the small woman. From there it's a frenzy he's only half aware of, her hands and lips somehow everywhere at once, breathing his name in that absent sort of way.

But when she comes, it isn't his name she screams. It's nothing more a nonsensical cacophony, a mishmash of almost words, hardly elegant and not quite romantic. His own release is not quite so dramatic and he feels her through the whole of it, shaking around him, attempting to come back to herself. The woman runs fingers through his hair absently, the gestures surprisingly tender as she sags against his chest. She repeats his name, mouthing it against his skin, this time apologetic.

She kisses him again, still barely down from her high, breathy and a little weak, "I'm so sorry." Again, impossible to tell if she's speaking to him or herself.

He smiles, running fingers along the length of her spine, "I know that too." Juliette shivers against him, resting her head beneath his chin. He holds her tighter. An odd intimacy that seems to keep the pain in their heads at bay.

But it is a temporary balm; he still feels it there, simply waiting. Closer than before.