The draws of winter pulled themselves inwards into the Church house in the same way they'd done every year. It was not unlike a dance, the dying of the day, and as each day died more readily than the last, the pace of this dance became more intense still. It would all begin in October, when the last of the leaves died and would reach its peak in February, and it did so that year, too. With each week, the tempo would grow sharper, and the invisible tune to which it was set a little duller in its lowest tones, but life would have to go on through it. One simply had to live, Clementine held, through the death of each day and all that came, and she'd press through the slowness that overcame her as it did.

The body as an amalgam of natural spirits was only ill-suited to this dance to begin with; in some long-forgotten time, when all walked on four legs still and dwelled in caves, it may have been a functional lull, a slowing of the senses and the self to become more protected but now, it was simply irksome. Clementine Milligan yawned into her tea. It was an ungainly yawn, broad and loud and she stifled it only barely. Only five in the afternoon and it was night outside already, and she turned the chair. Through the study window, she could make out the last embers of daylight. They cut through the dead trees. Peculiar, she thought, somewhat idly, how the trees frame it all so rather nicely, and how pretty it all looks.

It was, at any rate, prettier than her present task: ledgers. She'd been pouring over a prospective investment of theirs. Pulp and paper. Wall Street ran on paper, a thick-browed man had once told her at a function, and he cautioned her to this effect with a finger outstretched to a point, and he seemed most serious about it. Market trends seemed to support this assertion. Paper was up ten percent in the last quarter, and Clementine could see no real cliff from which this may fall. Edmund would caution her all the same, and so, out of a surfeit of protective instinct towards her husband's more nervous side, she'd picked out a dozen or so trend charts and then alloyed them with prospective profits. She rapped her fountain pen against the arm of the chair, eyes still fixedly on the sunset, and let herself sink into thought for a moment. Investments were troublesome. Thus far, they had a pawful backfire. First it was meat, and it backfired as they'd bet on California, and Texas overtook them in product, but the loss was manageable. Hemp was next.

The failure of that lay in legislation and not in any practical matter, and so they'd both let it rest. And then there was the infamous ink venture. Clementine closed her eyes. Each step they took in life, they'd taken together, and this togetherness was itself taken as absolute. It was within the vestiges of this togetherness that they embarked upon an ink venture four years ago. Clementine discovered the investment by chance, in the classifieds of the Post-Dispatch, and she left it for Edmund wordlessly, merely having circled it for him. An hour later, he was in her own office and pontificating on the potential benefits of such a business. Their plans were laid then.

It would be a quarter of a million to buy it, and the workers, and all the infrastructure, and they'd find investors for the chain of supply needed to run it. Edmund reached out to his fellow investors and found three willing ones, and Clementine could see their names in her mind as if it were only yesterday - Hobbes, Riley, and Hunt, three young upstarts with their paws in various pots that were beneficial to the proposed venture - and could recall their enthusiasm with equal clarity. And then they awoke one morning to find that the price of ink had plummeted to a historic low. Japanese imports were to blame. They were in this office that very morning, she recalled, around this very table, around a counting machine, and no matter which way they set the count, it was a four to one loss to them and nothing gained for it. Hobbes and Riley heard at once and telegram that they were out of the venture, and Hunt, who had signed with them for deliveries already, fulfilled his end of the bargain at a steep cost to himself, too.

The aftermath is what ached. In it, Clementine and Edmund exchanged the first bitter words of their marriage. Though a loud woman and prone to defending herself before strangers and peers fiercely, Clementine never took herself as capable of raising her voice at her husband, but she did, and he did at her, too. The reverberations of the door as he slammed it shut echoed in her still, and she knew it did in him, too. For a solitary and arduously long day, where the clocks seemed to still and the shadows seemed to linger within the cuts of themselves, she remained in the upstairs study and he in the downstairs one. When they met, they did so on the cusp of their bedroom, one in either of the two doors; he, coming out of the bathroom and she, walking in just then.

Edmund opened his mouth to speak and Clementine felt herself rush forward to close the span between them. Spoken apologies turned to an embrace, and she whispered her regrets into each part of him she could seize upon, as did he. It was this brief appearance of something new and terrible between them that stirred her to do her projections the way she did. Never again would she allow for a chance like that. Clementine Milligan had seen what money can do, and how deep the wedges are that it can drive between bodies and hearts alike, and she swore to herself that she'd never let herself share the fates of those she'd seen cleaved asunder in this manner.

It was by chance alone that the sound of the door stirred her from her thoughts. Clementine turned in its direction and found her husband there, with a newspaper in one paw and a cup of tea in the other. He looked haggard, his bare feet clad in his evening slippers, dress shirt hanging loose and tucked haphazardly into a pair of lounge bottoms. She could recall mornings that followed untold debauchery where he looked more composed, and the sight of him like this made her lips draw back softly in recollection.

"Och, there ye are," she greeted, to which Edmund nodded blankly. He made for the other side of the table, to sit where visitors to his office usually sat. He lay the newspaper out, flattened it with his paw, and then rested the mug beside it, to push it gingerly towards her, "Fer me?"

Edmund nodded softly, "Whittaker sends it. Black, no milk, no sugar."

"Ah take it he found ye on the downstairs sofa?" Clementine inquired and got another nod in response, "It's this winter. Terrible business, that. I cannae stay awake tae save me life."

"And yet, you're doing our ledgers again," He countered with a tender smile, and if there were not a desk between them, she'd have leaned over to caress the corner of it, "Studious as you are."

"Money never sleeps."

"And it shouldn't, but we should," The tone of his voice was every bit as soft as his smile. She noted it was a little ragged, too, rife with the crackling thrum she heard in it in the mornings, "Or, in shifts, as the situation warrants."

"One's always up guardin' our fortunes," Clementine chimed in return. Their eyes met. Inexorable softness poured from him; Edmund's left sat curled on the armrest of the chair, half-sunk into the green velvet, and his right propped his chin up and above it, he had his nose tilted a bit down at her and his eyes were half-lidded and, even with him having dispensed this glance to her hundreds of times by that point, Clementine still felt as if she may melt. Without any invitation on his part, she rose to her feet, bounded the table, and then sat down on the desk. One of her slippers, her right, loosed itself onto the floor with a thud and she raised her foot into his lap. Edmund took it in his paws and then ran his touch up and along her leg, "Come to relieve me, have ye?"

"Horrendous," he chided her and she bent herself down just enough to meet his rising form, and they exchanged a soft kiss. Each half held on in equal measure and then parted, and the paw on her knee caressed her downwards, "Your husband just awoke and you wish to debase him like so already."

"If ye'd prefer, we can always talk business," Clementine countered, words as soft as his and her eyes lingering on him, and she playfully reached behind herself to fetch a prop of some kind. She framed it between her paws without looking and hoped, quietly, that it was something businesslike, "Donnae I just cut the very image of professionalism?"

"What, having pilfered your own unedited book?"

To this, she did have to cast a downward glance; The Hangman's Reef, all of its hundred and forty pages, and half bearing the marks of his comments. Clementine let out a loud and rippling laugh. The manuscript was swiftly set aside and, as soon as she'd done so, he rose to his feet to press his lips to hers again. The titter died within his muzzle and turned to a little sound, which he took and then returned. It was all so easy. His paws explored her freely, from the low of her back to the middle of it and then the back of her neck, and he dipped her onto the surface of the table lightly. Only the prop of her own arm stopped him from laying her out entirely, and it allowed her a modicum of her own force, which she used to press her muzzle more deeply into his. They parted after a moment with a heavy breath, and Edmund fell against her, onto her shoulder. Clementine fixed a light hold onto the back of his head.

"How I love you," he whispered and she lay an affirming little peck to his cheek, "And how I'd like to take you right here."

"Sae soon after wakin'?" Clementine exhaled into his ear and felt his paw descend again, to her behind, into which he sank his digits across the boundary of her dress, "Ye may, if ye wish…"

To this, he turned his head and gave her a little look, wide-eyed and questioning, "Do you?"

"Aye."

In some other, lighter time, he may have swept the contents of the desk off it with his arm, but even in this state - breathing haggardly against her neck, paws raking channels in her fur through her clothes and his hips pressing into the space between her legs, she and her immodesty concealed still and rendering the motion a mere expression of passion and nothing else - Edmund was cognisant enough to leave matters as they were. After all, there was a perfectly serviceable futon behind them, and as he swept his paws under her, one beneath her back and the other under her knees and hoist her, Clementine clearly recalled their procuring it for specifically this purpose and nothing else. And naturally, this is where Edmund deposited her, from a polite height and with the very faintest kiss to her forehead right after. The touch turned to yet more pecks, this time against her hair, and he moved to sit, but found himself prevented; two paws sat fixedly on his hips now and he cocked a brow, and she did, too, in turn.

"Let me," she offered, head downcast slightly but eyes upturned, at him, and eyebrows raised, and he returned a sharply excited nod.

So she spanned the breach between them - a half foot, maybe less - and did so with a minute sigh. His shirt was warm against her nose, and Clementine jostled her muzzle up and into the parting of the silk garment. Both her paws moved in unison now, to undo one button after another, and each time she did, she lay a kiss to the open space beneath. He smelled of familiar things, a bit of mint and soap and a bit of himself, of the sweat and musk that had built up as he napped, and she took more in with each rake of her lips. They trailed down, to the small tuft of fur that became apparent across the rise of his bottoms, and her fingers looped themselves into the waistband. One tug followed, and another, and she exhaled firmly against the silken fabric beneath. Edmund was already rigid, and so she kissed him there, too, and tasted an inkling of him through the linens. Once more, she peeped upwards, this time with one of her brows cocked higher than the other and he, not at all given to coyness in this state, blinked at her blankly. She could see his chest rise above her, in undulating waves, as something great and willing passed through all of him and into his paws, and they ascended, to settle on her head. One did so briefly, and then fell, to her cheek, to caress it.

"Clementine…" he managed, and she countered with a low noise, a coo and then a little gasp, and she freed him fully, "My God."

"Each time I do this," Clementine whispered as she brushed her cheek against the fullness of his manhood, "Ye act as if ye'd never seen me do it before."

"Do not make me resort to poetry."

An easy tilt of her head is all she required, and she gave herself to it freely, to lay a row of kisses against the bare, turgid flesh, "Resort tae it."

"A man who sees an angel…" Edmund pressed lowly, through increasingly bated breaths, "...does not ask himself if it is twice as beautiful as the last time he'd seen it."

The rest of that disappeared with his voice. It vanished in the ways fires grow, it fell into a pyre and burned bright and he could not manage anything else, not beyond a few a moan and what she thought was her name but could not pick out, and her lips slid over him. Clementine closed her eyes. The taste was familiar; it was more of him once again. Her familiar Edmund, whom she could smell on all the clothes he'd made a mark of himself on, or on all the furniture they shared. Edmund, whom she smelled in their sheets when he got up before her and she lay there, alone and longing, the same Edmund whose presence clung on all the things she held dear, and whom she now tended to as tenderly as she could. Each time she did it a bit differently. Each time she held a different part of him: sometimes, it was the heft of himself in those plush places, sometimes it was his thighs, and now it was his bare behind, to which she clung in pawfuls, and she let the tip of him rake the roof of her mouth in skipping steps. There was no hurry in her. Though she could expedite, Clementine felt there was no need. He'd already deposited a good few drops of himself atop her tongue. His breaths had quickened and the wave returned to him and the paw in her hair took strands of her, wrapped them about itself and pulled, and did so tenderly. In this grip he'd made for himself, she felt his thumb, she felt it extrude and caress the lobe of her ear and it flicked into it, and so he did it again. Clementine felt the pace of her own breaths, too, as quick and willing as his. She could sense her own need burning beneath her, and her legs parted time and time again, no matter how often she drew them closed. This was sweet torture. It was the sweetest, most tender torture, and she did it to herself all too willingly, this dance of scents and tastes of him, so near to her middle and so far, and so he twitched in her mouth once more.

"Please," Edmund urged indistinctly, and then did so again, "Please. I love you. I love you so."

A pause ensued. He was frozen in her. Clementine let him sit there for a moment and then pulled on him; the paws on his rear did so, they drew him closer, and he needed no more inviting. Edmund rocked himself a bit in place, back and forth in her, and each time he did, she felt his touch relent and tighten atop her head. Through half-lidded eyes, she could see his, barely open too, and his countenance, and it was painted with nothing short of bliss. His lips were a softly upturned line and his brows rose up and down repeatedly, and she recalled that it was like this each and every time - though she changed her movements and her touches, he'd always look upon her in this slightly dim way, thoughtless and adrift in her, and in the things she did. Then came a gasp, and her name once more, and a grunt, and he unsheathed himself. Ropes of him rushed forth and across her face and hair and she closed her eyes.

"Mark me." Clementine commanded plainly and he lay his paw on her chin, to upturn her curtly; more fell over her, across her forehead now. She felt some fall on her shirt, too, and she could not help but laugh at it all, at the impending image of her hoisting the ruined linens into the washbucket herself, so old Whittaker could not suppose what they'd been up to. Edmund gasped a final time and relented, and then stood before her, his body shivering in the palms of her paws. They fell from him and onto his sides again, and she stood. Their lips met, hers stained with him and his taking the burden in turn, and they embraced deeply. A firm embrace, Clementine mused to no particular end, an embrace that was as needful as the one she'd felt a lifetime ago across the ocean, and it rendered some part of her aglow all over again. He needed her as badly as she needed him, and no time nor space would ever dull that need, and so she laughed into the kiss. It was all easy and free to her. They parted with a click of their lips.

"Now," She whispered into the narrow parting of their bodies, "Get me a tissue so I can open my eyes."

"I love you."

"And I, ye, ya eedjit."

That was not their end. The Sun died in the trees and only the dark remained, cut into rising ribbons by the branches of the trees, and she could see the very beginnings of stars appear through the glass. The dots broke in the reflection of the room and the reflection of themselves. She lay prostrate on his front, her back against it and her limbs splayed on all sides of herself and he, turned into a bed like this, picked through her hair with his nose. Every now and again, he'd kiss her there idly.

"You know, if not for this," Edmund exhaled and then raised his right paw; his thumb tapped against the side of his wedding ring, "I'd think myself a dead man."

"I'd not eat ye."

"You just did," he blurted out and she snorted loudly, and then laughed, "Immodest little witch."

"Goan, then, ye fiend," Clementine pressed with a roll of her eyes, "Why would ye think yersel' so dead?"

"Only heaven has pleasures such as these."

"What is it with ye an' angels today?" Her inquiry came with a twist of her body and she lay herself sideways slightly, just so she could eye his features as he spoke, "Yer makin' me 'hink ye found religion whilst ye were napping."

"Maybe, my sweet, it is you who is to blame," Edmund offered in turn, and he'd once more picked a few strands of her hair off her forehead, which he no doubt found matted still, even if she did run upstairs for a quick wash, "And before you say anything, you are the one who asked me to resort to poetry."

"Ah did."

The rest was as simple as it ever was: a slip of herself up and along him, a lingering touch of his lips on hers, and then the inevitable parting and the longing shape of him it left in her. One of his paws lay on the middle of her and she could feel him drum his digits in thought. They shared a silence. Clementine smiled idly.

"What?"

"Yer very pretty."

No matter how many times she said that, Edmund's reaction followed the same laid out steps. It was a flustered little flit of his eyebrows, a lacing together of them, almost as if he were sceptical that she'd said anything at all, and then a smile, as glad and soft as hers, and sometimes a kiss. This time, it was a peck to her forehead. Clementine chuckled quietly. Men did not think themselves pretty, and she knew this; they thought themselves rugged, masculine. They thought of themselves as cutting an image of that ruggedness and that image was separate of beauty, and leaps and bounds away from a word such as 'pretty.' But he was. The symmetry of him especially. All right angles and sharp edges, and yet so soft, and always eyeing her as such. She recalled him in all his states, just then. She recalled him sad, and she recalled him as he was when he was tired, and then, angry. The sole and singular time she'd seen him as such. Clementine's smile fell away. His did, too, at once.

"Is something the matter?"

"Do ye remember the ink venture?" She asked, eyes downcast now and peering at her paws, which had taken to nervously picking at each other in her lap, just above his, "The argument."

No response. And then, a light nod.

"I've been lookin' over our books, and at pulp and paper, and I'd like tae make an investment," Clementine's voice turned flat and his picking stopped, and she could hear the sound of the clock on the wall, and his breathing, and the wind as it raked against the window, "I'd like tae get yer opinion on it before I commit tae anythin'."

"Clemmie," Edmund said, softly, and she felt his paw rise off her and up, to her chin, to where he could tilt it up and towards himself, "You will never hear me like that again. No matter what happens."

"I believe ye."

"We handle this in halves, as always," He continued, "You one half and I the other. This is how it goes. We win together, we lose together. That is how it will always be. And I…" the pause was a pregnant one and he swallowed, "Never in my life, again. Not once."

"Ah was nae better," Clementine admitted and, though she tried to look away, he held her, and she felt glad for it, "I'd given ye a proper tannin', ah did."

"You did."

"We're not like that," She added, "Money won't make us like that."

"It hadn't thus far."

"It won't."

Another silence came. He held her still and she looked; golden brown, full of a love and softness she knew very well, and then the images of him slamming the door. The reverberation of it, his wide eyes a moment before, and her bellow, which felt alive in her throat and she wished it dead and as soon as the door had fallen shut that day, Clementine fell into a heap of herself and wept. Years ago. The love hadn't gone anywhere. Her smile returned.

"Ah've always been terrible," She remarked, beam growing into a coy smirk, which drew one of his own out, "And ye know this."

Edmund huffed theatrically, "Now that you mention it, what were the first words you'd ever said to me?"

"Nae, not without the whole yarn." She clamoured across an excited slap of her paw against the top of his, "Regale me. Tell me how we met. Tell me those words."

"Me this time?"

"Aye, ye always do it justice."

"And why's that?"

"Ah suppose ah like hearin' ye try and do Scots," Clementine shifted once more, this time lying flat atop him with her paws under her chin. Her smile was here to stay now, and if the mirror of it on his lips was any indication, so did he, "An' how ye describe my father."

"Lachlan," Edmund said heavily. Then, without any pomp at all, he gave his wife's behind a firm smack through her gown and threw his head back, "The long version. You get the long version this time."

"As penance?"

She watched him cock a brow, "Oh, so now it's torture?"

"Shut up and talk."

"Make your damn mind up, woman."