[Alexander] There was no word from Alexander for about a day or two after Sinclair bolted. For twenty-four, forty-eight hours, they may as well have ceased to exist for one another. Then there was an email, which once and for all proves that Alex can, in fact, write proper english:
I still have your stuff. I'm coming back to Chicago tomorrow. 7:50pm on United.
-A
Coming out of the airport, his tan and his bucket hat and his bright orange t-shirt a sharp contrast to the other weary, winter-coated travelers milling by, he looks for Sinclair but doesn't see her. At the doors he puts on a heavy ski jacket and is suddenly just like everyone else.
He realizes he doesn't know anything about Sinclair's habits and whereabouts. He doesn't know where she likes to eat, where she likes to hang out. He knows where she sleeps, but he doesn't want to go back to the Brotherhood where the walls are thin and everyone already knows he fucked Marrick, and then kicked her ass. He doesn't want rumors to start going around: that he fucked Sinclair, and then he broke her heart.
Four, five days after fat tuesday in Rio de Janeiro, he sends another email:
This is my new address. Come by if you want to talk, ok?
[Sinclair] No answer, when he told her he had her stuff. Let him keep it, she thought when she got the email and went back to spending time with her pack, watching the Olympics and sparring with Lukas. Let him fucking have it. Some clothes. Toothbrush. A few talens just in case. A handful of brightly-colored condoms, also just in case, though she certainly didn't make those, or buy them, or even ask for them. A pair of sandals. She curled up in bed and tucked her hands between her knees and did not look at the clock the next night at 7:50pm.
Wouldn't have been hard to see her, even at O'Hare. People don't jostle Sinclair, usually. People give her a wide berth. There would've been empty space all around her. There usually is.
No answer, when he gives her his new address. And nothing, at all, for another couple of days. Then it's Tuesday well after dark, though before ten, and she's knocking on his door.
It's her moon. The last time he saw her on a night like this, they tussled in the snow as a demonstration to Katherine. By the time they headed inside and went upstairs, there was Walker blood in the parking lot. And Alex, at one point, had gotten pinned by the Galliard and known just how much effort she put into not kissing him, then and there, with everything she had. He hasn't seen her on a waning gibbous moon yet to know just how striking the difference is, hasn't seen her often enough on a waxing gibbous moon to see a pattern, but still:
Sinclair has a gleam to her, a brightness that borders on a glow effect one might apply to a photograph. Her pale hair seems thicker and softer, though it's just pulled back into a low ponytail. Her eyecolor is intensified, the apotheosis of blue. She's more beautiful. She's faster. She's stronger. She's that much more dangerous, and because the moon is so heavy, she's that much more likely to lose control.
When Alex opens the door -- or when Alex comes home and sees Sinclair hanging out in his hallway, leaning on the wall -- he finds her dressed in skinny-legged jeans, old blue Nikes, and a black leather jacket zipped up all the way to the collar. It's not very old. Her hair is smooth, her makeup dark around the eyes and pale on the lips, and
she looks up and meets his eyes, and doesn't say a word.
[Alexander] His new place, it turns out, isn't much classier than the Brotherhood. Selling his genetic superiority to wealthy Glass Walkers interested in having tall, pretty, warrior children but too damn busy to worry about something so trivial as a mate: that little side business made him a tidy sum. Ten, fifteen thousand dollars all told. Enough, at least, to afford a pretty decent upgrade in his housing situation for six months, a year.
He didn't think to invest any of it, or to save any of it, or spend it on a nicer apartment, or buy a car, or do anything with it at all except go to Rio de Janeiro. Get drunk, get high, get laid and party for three weeks. And somewhere in the process, much more by accident of circumstance than by design: help Sinclair lose her virginity. Fuck her again on the last and wildest night of Carnival. Watch her go running away, wounded, as she hadn't even when he fucked her so hard it hurt her.
The day after was Ash Wednesday. The city became somber. The devout went to church. The party crowd were ashen-faced, overstimulated and overintoxicated, hung over from it all, ready to go home.
He spent another day or two in Rio. Explored the city and the surrounding terrain. Hiked Sugarloaf Mountain again. Swam in the broad turquoise bay and walked the streets. Ate barbecue from a streetcorner vendor. Watched the sunset.
Came home.
And now he's living in a low, squat apartment complex, circa 1960, about a block from a freeway. Any farther north and he'd be in Cabrini Green; as is, he's riding the line between that hellhole and the much, much more exclusive River North area.
This particular complex has a lot more in common with the former than the latter. No covered parking -- his Buell's sitting in his assigned space, axle-deep in snow -- no elevators. No greater security than the closed doors and chain locks on the inside. Not even a locked front door and an intercom. Sinclair could get right in without trouble. The common areas of the complex are carpeted in drab brown, wallpapered in boring beige. There are waterstains from old leaks and floods on the carpet. The wallpaper is faded. The doors are heavy brown wood, tarnished brass numbers on the outside.
Alexander's flat is on the fourth floor. He isn't home when she knocks, but he's back ten minutes later. She can recognize him by his gait, stomping. He has two paper bags of groceries in his arms and his cheeks are flushed with cold. He's huffing slightly from carrying the load up four stories. He must've taken the bus.
He stops dead when he sees her. It's just a second's worth of pause. Then he comes to his door, bends to set his bags on the ground. "Hey," he says, awkward, finding his keys in his pocket and unlocking his front door. He pushes it open for her to go in first.
It turns out to be a cramped one bedroom layout. A tiny living room, a tinier kitchen; a short hall with a tiny bedroom and a tinier bathroom. No laundry, no dishwasher, nothing but the very basics. The windows are small. Overhead lighting in the entry hall and the living room cast a sallow light over sparse furniture: a rumpled couch, a small LCD TV, his drum set, a coffee table.
"I didn't actually think I'd see you again," he says, moving his groceries in and then shutting the door.
[Sinclair] Ten minutes isn't long enough for Sinclair to leave, or to even slump down and sit on the floor, legs stretched across the hallway. It is long enough for her to bitterly reflect on the fact that he didn't wait for her when she ran from him, and then rub her forehead and try to dismiss the rather backwards rancor. She's standing, back to the wall, sneakers on the ground, arms crossed, when he huffs his way up.
Sinclair can smell him down the hall, and looks straight at him when he comes into view. She notices the pause, and thinks: he's scared of me. But she knew that. And he never tried to hide it, never pretended he wasn't.
Another thought -- unwanted and bordering on self-loathing -- comes to her then, which stabs, and then twists, and if there's a tightness like pain around her eyes when she decides to turn away from looking at him, he'll have to guess at why. She glances away, turns back as he greets her, and mutters: "Hey," a moment before they head inside.
Realizing her arms are still crossed over her chest, Sinclair unfolds them, keeping her jacket zipped. He says he didn't think he'd see her again as she glances briefly around his apartment, and she keeps her back to him. "Yeah, well. It burns up my spirit, dedicating shit. If it was just an ordinary backpack and a toothbrush I wouldn't care much about getting it back."
But: it's a piece of her, now. Bonded to her soul, in a way. A piece of her soul, in another. Not quite an arm or a leg, but... it takes some effort to create the tie. And she doesn't have a whole lot to give her pack or herself when it comes to activating talens or holding herself back from frenzy, as it is. Essentially she's saying: that shit ain't cheap.
[Alexander] "Oh," he says. There's something in that oh, behind it, that tells something about his reaction to this; whether or not Sinclair can read it is another matter entirely.
They are not looking at each other. He's going back to his groceries on the kitchen counter, saying, "Let me put my ice cream in the freezer and I'll go get your stuff."
Tomatoes and potatoes and leafy green lettuce come out of the bags; packets of sandwich meat, a styrofoam tray of steaks, a bagged chicken. Also, a carton of Breyer's ice cream, which he puts in the freezer. The rest of the produce and meats he leaves out on the counter, wiping his hands on the seat of his pants. As he's coming out of the small kitchen he looks at her, meeting her eyes briefly if she's looking his way.
He unzips his jacket as he passes her. Tosses it on the couch and disappears into the bedroom, where she can hear him rummaging around.
When he comes back, he has her backpack in hand. The top is closed now, if it had been open when she left it. He holds it out to her, arm outstretched. "I put your clothes inside," he says. "I didn't dig around or anything, otherwise."
[Sinclair] [this will totally work]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 4, 5 (Botch x 1 at target 6)
[Sinclair] [...that's what i get.]
[Sinclair] She glances back over her shoulder at him when he says that Oh, looking at him with a slight furrow to her brow. Her back is straight, her shoulders too. As far as her presence is concerned, it seems to both fill and light up the room at once. He's no Garou: he can't sense her glory, her rank by scent and body language alone. But tonight there's something close to it in the air, a feeling of something like awe pressing against the edges of his awareness, lurking or luring.
He walks to the kitchen, and she doesn't look at him when he passes back out. She listens to him rummaging around in his bedroom, and sits down heavily on the grumpy old couch, staring at the floor. His jacket is a few inches to her right, but she doesn't look at it.
That's where she is when he comes back out, and wonders just how stiff and nasty-smelling her clothes are now. Those jeans were wet with pond-water. She winces slightly, knowing that stupid thong -- all stripes in different shades of blue, a thin black lace trim, not really that expensive, kinda cute -- is in there, too, and that she was getting so wet when he first found it on her body, touched her through it.
Sinclair looks nauseated, a moment after that wince, and takes the knapsack from him, standing up again. "I wouldn't figure you would," she mutters, drawing the bag closer to herself. She stares at him a moment, wordless, then: "I'm sorry I ran off," Sinclair says, the apology falling a bit flat, and most definitely coming out awkwardly. "I'll see you around," she adds, and slings the backpack over one shoulder, apparently intending to leave the conversation there.
[Alexander] Alexander's always found it awkward to run into one night stands after the fact. Memories are inevitable: what they looked like naked. What they sounded like when they came, or at least faked one. What they felt like under his hands, or on his cock. What they smelled like, tasted like, how they handled their walk of shame.
Sinclair, granted, wasn't exactly a one night stand. More like two. And he knew her beforehand. And the sex was ... fantastic. Affectionate, passionate, really fucking hot. And fun. But the circumstances of her leaving was sudden and awkward enough to more than make up for what familiarity they had, and whatever intimacy they shared. Now he doesn't know how to deal with her.
Now that he knows what she looks like naked right before they fuck. Now that he knows what she sounds like when she comes. What she tastes like, and feels like, what she looks like when she sleeps after they've finished.
He just shrugs as she apologizes. "It's okay," he says. She says she'll see him around; he suspects that's a lie. She turns to go and he says, "If you'd asked me not to fuck anyone else."
Which is half a sentence. It catches there because he's not sure he wants to say the rest, and there's a long pause, and then he does.
"And if you'd told me you weren't going to either," he finishes, "I would've agreed."
[Sinclair] Maybe that's the point when she'd snap. Whip around, tear his head off. Sinclair doesn't, but by now that might be getting to be the expected reaction: for her not to try and hurt him, tear him apart, shred him to pieces. Then again, she's Garou, and that kind of reaction is always on the table. So it says something about Alex, that he speaks his mind anyway. It always has. Especially to her.
She doesn't turn completely, and she doesn't get very far, because he fragments a sentence he's trying to hand over to her. Sinclair watches him while he decides whether or not to continue.
For a couple of moments, she just stares at him, a weight of quiet sadness to her, head held up regardless, back and shoulders straight regardless. Some would call it nobility, or endurance, but neither quite fit. She's not being tortured: she's just hurting, and she should have seen it coming, and she knows it.
"I know I didn't ask you not to," she says. Something about her voice, this soft, is almost lyrical. Poetic. "When I told you I didn't think I could be casual about it if that was how it was going to feel, I guess I assumed ...it was like that for you, too. That it felt like... I don't know. Something more than just fooling around. But I guess I wouldn't really know." She shrugs one shoulder, smirkingly briefly and tightly to cover some measure of embarrassment.
Or vulnerability.
It falls back, and she shakes her head a bit. "I probably should've asked you to wait... til I came back, or til you got back to Chicago, so maybe we could figure out what this was," not is, "but I kinda figure that if two days later you were fucking someone else, you already knew what it was to you."
Sinclair doesn't sound angry. Accusatory. Backbiting. Resigned, maybe. She's spent something like a week thinking this, and accepting it, and maybe that's long enough.
(Not nearly.)
She shrugs again. "For what it's worth, I get that I never told you outright. I don't think you, like, did something 'wrong' or whatever."
[Alexander] "I don't think you're hearing what I'm saying," he says, slowly -- and carefully, so carefully, because the moon is nearly full and there's something about Sinclair tonight, something that makes her sharper and more immediate and fuller and --
She's so far beyond human tonight, so out of his reach with whatever it is that lights her blood, that he's almost afraid to look at her for long. And Alexander rarely has that problem. With anyone.
"I'm not blaming you for not telling me. I'm not pushing blame around or saying who's wrong and who's right or even if anyone's right or wrong at all. I'm trying to tell you..."
He winces suddenly, as through frustrated by his own inability to vocalize this. Once upon a time Alex graduated summa cum laude from Harvard fucking University; wrote an honors dissertation on the gravitational lens effect of quasars; wrote another one, a hundred pages long, on the virgin-whore complex of Tolstoy's heroines, and after all this,
can't come up with words that put the simplest of concepts into perspective.
"I'm trying to tell you I didn't know what that was between us. I mean I heard what you said, but," a sort of helpless laugh, "for fuck's sake, Sinclair, you were a virgin afterglowing from her first fuck. For all I knew you'd come back to Chicago and forget all about it. I'm trying to tell you if I'd known, I would've waited. I would've wanted to."
[Sinclair] "Does the fact that I permanently alter my body -- which is really fucking hard to do without dying, by the way! -- to mark things that matter to me indicate to you that I tend to forget shit easily?!" she yells at him, quite suddenly, though truth be told she sounds more exasperated than angry. Both. Something like that.
This building is old enough, the walls thin enough, that hearing her raise her voice, his neighbors flinch. "I liked you for like... six months!" she tosses out, a throwaway number because she doesn't stop to think and count and figure out when, exactly, she went from casual awareness of his existence to interest to... whatever it was she came to Rio de Janeiro with. A crush.
"And you didn't want me. And I was okay with that." Not true, so, a bit quieter: "I could deal with that." Might not be true, either.
She reaches up and rubs at the side of her face, exhaling, getting a hold of herself. "I ran something like ...four or five thousand miles, just to see you," she mutters. "Yeah, it was by moonbridge, so it didn't... it wasn't like I actually ran every mile." It's hard to explain, so she doesn't. Just drops it. She closes her eyes, tighter than necessary. "And I said I didn't know if I could be your friend when I wanted you so badly, and you said you wouldn't mind being my fucking mate and because I didn't tell you flat-out that I wanted you to myself for awhile you went and --"
Her face pinches. She's rambling, and in the end all of it -- which could come out to nothing more than how could you? -- ends up being ...venting, maybe. Sinclair drops her hand and breathes, looking up and over at him, her brow furrowed. "I was so happy to see you again that night," she says quietly, shaking her head a little. "And it was... so great. And then everything just hurt."
[Alexander] Alexander jumps when she shouts. Then he folds his arms over his chest, fingers tucked between biceps and sides of chest; a self-protective gesture that makes him look smaller, makes his frame look as compact as it really is. He listens to the rest of it wincing, but as soon as she finishes he hollers right back, "Well I'm sorry I can't read your fucking mind, Sinclair!
"Christ. You couldn't even tell me what exactly it was you meant by 'can't keep it casual'. How the hell was I supposed to know? I mentioned mate and you couldn't backpedal fast enough. Then we fuck around and go see the sights and you leave with some vague promise about Carnival and I don't hear a peep from you until, BAM, there you are, and suddenly it's not okay that you're not the one and only girl in my life. How was I supposed to know?"
It's a rather jumbled, disconnected sort of argument. Alex falls silent for a beat, fumes a while, then starts up again.
"You know what I think? I think you don't even know how you feel about me. I sure as hell don't think you 'love'," he puts air quotes around the word, then tucks his hands tightly back under his biceps right after, "me. I don't 'love' you. But I like being with you and we have fun together and I don't mind seeing how this turns out, which is a big fucking step for me. I don't mind 'being exclusive'," more air quotes, "for as long as it takes to figure this out. Hell, I honestly don't even mind the idea of being mated to you because I meant what I said: it could be a hell lot worse for me. But whatever the hell it is you want from me, Sinclair, I need it out on the table, spelled out. You can't mumble some shit about not-casual and expect me to figure out you meant you want me all to yourself."
[Sinclair] The backpack slides down off her shoulder and off her arm, thumping to the floor. It seems to be only done so that she can throw her arms out. "What the fuck did you think it meant, Alex?"
[Alexander] "Think what meant?"
[Sinclair] She looks like she's about to throttle something. If not Alex, then... air. Something. "Not being casual!" she all but shrieks. "How many options does that leave, for chrissakes?"
[Alexander] "I. Didn't. Know what it meant, Sinclair!" They're bellowing at each other now. If this keeps up he'll get noise complaints to the management; possible fucking eviction. "I thought maybe you were talking about Something Serious but then you backed off so fast when I said mated that I figured no, you probably just meant you wanted to see me again. Maybe you were going to come back for Carnival. Maybe you were gonna drop by here for a bootycall now and then. Maybe you wanted me to wine and dine you. How the hell should I know if you didn't tell me, Sinclair? Huh? Fucking fuck!"
[Sinclair] There's no word for the noise she makes there, part scream of frustration, part howl of anger. Sinclair tenses, about to whip around and -- who knows. Put her arm through his door. Smash it to splinters. Beat her head against drywall. Twist in her own rage til she snaps and tears him to frayed and bloody pieces. She shoves her hands into her hair, disrupting the smoothness of it where it lays against her scalp, pulling strands from their moorings at the base of her skull, nostrils flaring.
For a moment, Sinclair just stands there, heels of her hands against her temples, eyes wide and wild and unblinking, staring at his floor instead of looking at him. She looks intensely focused, breathing harshly, all but panting from the effort at control.
Alex has sharp enough instincts to keep the fuck quiet for a few seconds, right then. Neighbors are tense, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the suddenly-erupting argument next door and across the hall to explode into actual violence. They wait for gunshots, or screams, or something. They wait for a smell from under that tanned newcomer's door a few days hence. They wait.
Sinclair exhales in a rush, after awhile. Her chest caves with it underneath her zipped-up leather coat. She drops her hands, hair askew, suddenly yanking down that zipper and shrugging out of the coat, wearing a dusky purple camisole underneath, lace across the chest. The jacket drops, and he can see she's sweating. No matter that it's in the teens outside at this point, dropping steadily as wind comes off the lakes. Sinclair paces, two steps forward and then turning, taking a step to the left. Stops.
"My Alpha killed another wolf. He's punished for it. My packmate's punished for standing by him. I'm punished for standing by him. One of my other packmates just made a complete moron of himself challenging for leadership and I have to beat it into his skull why, exactly, that was fucking stupid. Half the elders and the majority of Cliaths won't listen to a word I say because of what I did to Arthur, and I'm a Galliard. People listening to me is kinda fucking important. And I have to get up at the next moot and find something worthwhile and positive to say about a Fang who went around doing nothing but lying and manipulating everyone around him."
There's no point, there, none but: I'm tired. I have a lot going on. I'm pissed the fuck off.
"The thing is, I know exactly how I feel about you, and I know what I want from you. And all I knew when you had sex with me was that you prefaced it like a dozen times telling me how much you didn't want me to like... imprint on you or get all serious. It was a big deal for me to even tell you that 'casual' --" the word's been said so much by now it's lost all meaning, "-- might be too hard for me, because I was scared you'd be on the other side of the room in two seconds if I so much as hinted that I actually had a crush on you.
"So when you didn't... seem to mind. And when you kept telling me to stay another night, and come back, and then you wanted to take me out to eat, I just... I thought you understood. And felt the same way. Or something."
[Alexander] That noise she makes, that raw sound straight from the gut, straight from the pits of primal emotion, makes Alexander flinch so hard his eyes flick closed for a second.
Then she's silent, and so is he, holding his tongue for once in his goddamn life because he has the intuition to sense that opening his mouth now might be the last thing he does. He watches her, though, wary, eyes sharp on her face, waiting
for the other shoe to drop.
But it doesn't. She talks instead. He stands where he is, arms folded tightly across his chest, watching her pace. He listens. He doesn't interrupt. He listens.
And when she's done --
"I know. And I'm sorry that I didn't." A pause. "But I really need to know now. Just ... as clearly as you can tell me. What do you want from me?"
[Sinclair] When she told him that she knew how she felt, and knew what she wanted, Sinclair wasn't kidding. She wasn't just making nice with her words without being able to back it up. She looks at him, jacket and bag on the floor, and sighs. "I want to know that I'm safe with you."
Which sounds so... very, very odd, given what she is. Given what she can do. Given the inevitability of death, and pain, and injury. Sinclair's no fool, no eyelash-batting farmer's daughter. She isn't talking about Alex being able to beat up some thug in the alleyway trying to steal her purse. She's talking about the only part of her that is at risk, that might be vulnerable.
She speaks quietly, though, and levelly, and clearly. She once managed to translate Lukas-speak into Marrick-speak. Still a point of pride for her, really. That took effort.
"I want to be around you when I can, because I'm happy when I'm around you. I want it be okay to be who I am with someone while I'm figuring out who I am. I want it to be you because I know you'll be honest with me, and ...not judge me, I guess. I want to know that if I come over here I'm not going to end up frenzying and ripping a bitch's head off because of that part of me that looks and you and says 'mine'." There's a vicious intensity in that word, and it's not love, and it's not even rightly protectiveness or possessiveness. It's little more than instinct, and no better than.
"If I'm with you, then I'm only with you. So... if you're with me, I want you to only be with me. And..." she hesitates on this last part, because it seems weak, but it's also the truth. It's part of what she is, to say it regardless of her own investment either way. "I want you to want me back, and want to be with me, and if you don't, I want you to tell me, because it wouldn't make me happy to be with you, unless I knew it was what you wanted, too."
As clearly as she can tell him. All out on the table. Or, in this case, hanging in the air above a rather ugly carpet.
[Alexander] There's a long pause; something like consideration of what she's laid out, which is a lot. Almost too much to handle at once. Leaves him reeling a bit, unprepared for this, unready for -- quite frankly -- the consequences of what was ultimately a whim, a kneejerk response in a distant southern city, under a hot southern sun.
Now he's back in the north. In the cold. In the winter. And the surroundings are not decadent and luxurious; there are no maids cleaning out his dirty linens and replacing them with fresh ones, no waiters bringing him room service, no clubs that are open til 7am every morning pounding out the beats while an international crowd of partygoers flock into town for the biggest party of them all.
This is his life as it is: regimented, stark, mean. And in it, Sinclair seems suddenly out of place again, a vicious wild force, a thing he cannot even hope to regiment or contain.
"Okay," he says. The word seems paltry and flimsy against what she gave him.
After a moment: "But I don't love you." He says this again like it's a shield, like it's something very important that might protect him somehow, later on, if she would just understand it now. "I like you. A lot. But I don't love you. I don't think I know what love feels like.
"If you're okay with that, if you're okay with me figuring this out as we go, and if you're okay with the possibility that I might not be able to ... handle this in the end," he takes a deep breath, "then if I'm with you I'm only with you."
[Sinclair] Back in Rio, Alex had admitted readily that he didn't know why he didn't want Sinclair before, but wanted her then. Now. He'd told her to stop questioning it, to stop trying to catch him in a lie when he wasn't telling one and, frankly, doesn't seem given to telling them. Also: he'd told her that in Chicago she never felt like his friend. In Chicago, he didn't see her lounging in a bikini by a sparkling pool. In Chicago, things were different.
Who knows. Maybe they actually are.
It's too cold to go running around outside in a flimsy camisole and rather lean leather jacket. Or: it would be too cold for him. It would be too cold for any human, or near-human. It's one of those small, subtle reminders that just reinforces what he knows anyway: Sinclair isn't human, and her strength is beyond mortal, and her capacity for violence is seemingly infinite. Given that she was just yelling at him a few minutes ago, it might not be a reminder of how hot she is to the touch. It might just be what it really is: rage. In his living room.
She stands there, watching him after she's spoken, and he says okay. When he says he doesn't love her, all that happens is a faint twisting to one corner of her mouth, more wry smile than grimace. "I don't love you either, Alex," she says quietly, interjecting. "I really like you." And somewhat earnestly, without the wryness, without the hint of a smile: "I care about you. But..."
A half-shrug that says what they both already have, now. It drops, and his light catches the bar on her arm and makes it gleam for a moment.
Listening to the rest, Sinclair ...just nods. Her eyes close for a slow blink on the first one, then open again. They are, in some respects, asking a lot of each other. Get over the fact that I hurt you. Get over the fact that I scare you. Accept that this is limited, and temporary, and possibly not very deep. Accept that I might hurt you again. Accept that I'll never get less frightening, probably only moreso. Accept that I'm not really all that nice, and that you won't see me often, and
and.
and.
Sinclair nods to it, and murmurs: "Okay," because in another way, they're not asking anything extraordinary of each other at all. To be around sometimes. To give a little. To be honest. To not fuck around, even if it's only to keep some poor airheaded girl from a nightclub from getting torn apart by a monster with a lifelong mating instinct and brutal, uncompromising territorial streak.
Which is another thing she's asking him to deal with. She lifts one hand and reaches back to undo her ponytail entirely. It wasn't up long, apparently, or else the waxing gibbous moon even gives her good hair days: there's no kink where the band held it, just loose hair brushing her shoulders.
"I figure if you can be okay with the fact that sometimes I might show up because I killed someone I shouldn't have, and that one day you might get an email from my system letting you know I died... and if you can be okay with me not knowing what I'm doing, either, then... yeah. I can live with that."
Unflinching truths.
Sinclair breathes deeply, her voice quieting afterward: "If... if you can't handle this, will you please just tell me?" This might not be necessary. But apparently to Sinclair, after Carnival, it is. She almost winces as she says it, as though expecting it to make him angry, maybe. Upset, somehow. "Or if you're not sure how I feel about you or whatever, just talk to me about it. Okay?"
[Alexander] Alexander nods -- once, and then several more times.
"Yeah. I will."
He watches her let down her hair. Somehow this makes him wince a little too: because she's so damn beautiful tonight. Because she's so damn present, and vivid, that she washes out everything else in his room. Everything else in his life. Makes it all seem dim.
"You look amazing," he says suddenly, a compliment so heartfelt it's simply awkward.
Then: "Are you staying? Because," his smile is more like a twitch, "I need to put my groceries away."
[Sinclair] Quite frankly, it's the truth: everything dims in comparison to Sinclair tonight. It's her rage. It's her beauty. It's her youth and strength her goddamn nature: what she is diminishes the things that humans concern themselves with. But if that's the case, Sinclair doesn't seem aware of it, herself.
She looks at him when he compliments her. She can't recall, at least off the top of her head, any time he's said anything like that. So fucking hot is different. I like the way you move. I like your tits. doesn't quite cut it. Sinclair just looks at him, not quite sure how to take that. Or how to respond to it. So she blinks, clearly caught a little off guard.
It's definitely awkward.
There's a long pause before she says: "I'd like to."
Which is a yes. Then: "I'll help." She bends to pick up her coat and bag, tossing them on the couch, and starts to go with him to the kitchen.
[Alexander] "Okay," Alexander says again. When he smiles, this one comes more naturally.
They go into his kitchen. There's scarcely enough room for the two of them. She can see his fridge is quite orderly. No rotting foods; no unusual stains and spills. He puts the vegetables in the crisper and shows her where to stack the sandwich meats; tucks the eggs into the egg holder one by one and tosses the paper crate.
While she finishes up, he sets the steaks out on the counter and grabs a pan. He was going to make them for dinner anyway, and it'd be rude as fuck not to offer her any now that she's staying. There's no grill in here. He preps the steaks and sticks them in the oven, then tosses a quick salad with lettuce and tomatoes. He suspects she'll only pick at it, anyway.
At one point, while the steaks are cooking, he mentions that he likes his new place. He says he misses the food at the BroHo and that cooking for himself sucks; complains that it takes five times longer to prepare a meal than to eat it. He says he likes the privacy, though, and he likes knowing that anyone who might come bitching about his drums would run the fuck away if he just screamed in their faces and acted a little unhinged.
A little later, while they're eating over the coffee table -- he doesn't have a proper dining table -- he adds, It does get lonely sometime though. Sometimes I miss the constant hubbub in the BroHo.
Leave the dishes, he tells her when they're done. They pile them in the sink. That awkwardness is back; it never really went away. It's been there since she ran away from him on the last night of Carnival, dashing into the woods in animal form like a goddamn fairytale.
It's getting late, anyway. He's back on his schedule. Up at six. Asleep by ten.
"Let's just go lie down together, okay?" It's so quiet in his apartment that they can hear the neighbors talking through the walls. It's so quiet that he speaks quietly himself. "I think maybe if we just ... sleep in the same bed I'll wake up remembering what it was like in Rio."
[Sinclair] Two clumsier people with less spatial awareness would bump constantly into one another in this kitchen, which isn't even a proper galley, it's so small. As it is, the two of them have a dangerous sort of grace: Alex's from being quick on his feet in the ring, Sinclair's fluid, predatory, familiar with moving with a pack. She tries not to brush unnecessarily against him, get in his way, or allow him to get in hers. Not the most perceptive of wolves, she still moves slower than she can -- slower than she usually does -- in order to make sure she knows where he is.
Sinclair puts away groceries just like any normal person would, though it's been a very, very long time since she's done this particular chore. She's bright enough to assess the organization already in place in the kitchen, and guesses where things go. What she can't guess, she just puts up front where he can find it later. And then he peers over and tells her there and she says oh, sounding like she's vaguely surprised she didn't see it on her own. But it might be odd, seeing her doing this. Like she's a person who takes out the trash. Like she's a person who has to stop at the gas station to fill up her car. Like not everything she eats is first stalked, hunted, harried, and torn to its death, blood steaming in the winter air.
Might be odd, realizing that she knows her way around the kitchen. Helps prep the steaks, if he lets her. Puts the salad together, if he mentions it. Says offhandedly: I tried to live off salads for awhile when I was in my third... maybe fourth year at Cheer Eclipse, because a few other girls were. My mama-- not mom, not mother, -- reamed me the fuck out and told me if I was gonna do stuff like that she'd pull me outta -- not 'out of', -- every sport I was in so fast my stupid little head would spin around like a top til it fell off, and then I'd lose a good eight pounds or so, how 'bout that. And a beat. I think those may have been her exact words, actually.
Sinclair pops a cherry tomato in her mouth midway through this story, talks around it while he salts the steak.
She leans against the counter while he tells her he likes it here, doesn't really like having to make his own meals, enjoys the privacy. Quirks a lopsided, lazy little grin when he mentions screaming in people's faces. Afterward, when she's eating everything on her plate quite thoroughly -- a balanced meal, imagine that -- and he says it gets lonely without the constant chaos of the Brotherhood, she leans against him for a moment, arm to arm, shoulder to shoulder.
Which is to say (though she doesn't): Yeah. I get that.
They eat, and her plate is clean except for juices from the steak and a couple of tomato seeds, a couple of thumbprint-sized bits of lettuce stuck to the surface of the dish. She moves to gather it all up, remembering from long ago courtesies and habits that were a part of her daily life for so much of it, and is starting to search for dish soap when he says
Leave the dishes.
Sinclair looks at him past her shoulder, head tipped slightly. She seems at ease, even if he's awkward, but there's certainly a distance there. She's a little too far away tonight: not touching him but for that bump of her shoulder to his, though Sinclair has always been hesitant to reach out to him physically unless he does, first. Besides: she's otherworldly tonight, at the zenith of everything she is, and somehow seems untouchable as a result. Unreachable.
She dries her hands on a kitchen towel, or a paper towel, or her jeans if neither are available. A few doors down someone is watching television; she can't tell what show, but it has ominous tones for a soundtrack. A procedural of some kind.
What he says makes her hesitate a fraction of a second before reacting at all. She could take it so wrong. Think: it really is different, when we're here. Think: he only felt comfortable and happy with me when we were in Fantasyland. Think: is it so hard to remember? But instead she just nods a couple of times, slow and then simply, her manner a display of something that may be as surprising for her to show him as it was for her to get from him:
patience.
Sinclair nudged her feet out of her shoes sometime ago, left her sneakers by the side of the couch, her coat tossed over the back. Ironically enough, she has a toothbrush with her, stuck in that little backpack he brought back from Brazil. In polka-dotted socks, she pads over and says: "Show me where the bathroom is and I'll come to bed in a few minutes, okay?"
There's a few inches between them when he answers, points her in that direction. Sinclair doesn't close it.
--
Maybe he brushes and flosses and washes his face at the same time she does, sharing a sink. Doesn't really matter either way: Sinclair stays in the bathroom a little longer than he does, and he can hear water running for some time. Come morning he'll find the clothes that got shoved in the bag after being soaked in pond water and then left in the bag for a week. A soapless wash in his bathroom sink isn't much, but whatever: there they are, hung over towel racks and shower curtain rod, dripping. Including that thong she wore.
In the meantime, when Sinclair comes into his bedroom maybe five minutes after he's gone in there, she's down to camisole and panties. There was a bra under the undershirt-turned-tanktop when she came over, but it's gone now. The panties are nothing special: tight, lowcut boyshorts. They happen to be powder-blue. They happen to be comfortable, and she can move easily in them. She turns down the covers if they aren't already and crawls in beside him, if he's there waiting.
Already it's not the same as anything else. She's never been in a bed with him before without being completely naked. And she's never been in bed with him before without being upset, drained, or quite literally fucked into exhaustion. Sinclair's exceedingly quiet when she slides under the covers, legs whispering between the sheets, breathing steady. When she turns to face him, she says in a murmur:
"It's different." She pauses, pressing her lips together and licking them, letting them unfurl again. "Because you're going to be here for longer than a couple of weeks. And there's no housekeeping staff to magically remove all evidence that either of us were ever here. It's real life again. And real life is harder to change."
It seems to be something she considered before saying. And: just says it. Lays her head on a pillow and watches him, her eyes as liquid-bright as moonlit water, and her hair laying across his linens, her jawline. Shadows cling to her throat, to her cheek against the pillow, the cleft between her breasts, the place where her wrist rests against the mattress, the slope of the blankets where it covers her waist and descends back towards the bed in a long, wrinkled dip before ascending again towards where it covers Alex.
That awkwardness is still there. But Sinclair doesn't seem to mind.
[Alexander] Sinclair does, in fact, help Alex with the salad. He's mildly surprised that she knows how to cook, how to stock a fridge, how to eat her vegetables. He laughs when she tells him about her mother, and the distance between them seem briefly surmounted.
Then the meal continues, and their silence continues, and ...
soon enough he's going to bed. She's in the bathroom still, which is just across the narrow hall, and which has enough room for a standalone sink and a toilet and a shower-tub and nothing else. When they both occupied it, there was barely enough room to turn around. Now that he's out of it, he can still hear her moving around in there, fabric sloshing as she washes it.
Alex reappears in the bathroom doorway. "Hey," he says, "just leave it. I'll run a load of laundry tomorrow and throw it in." He holds his hand out to her. "Come to bed."
--
Whether then or later, at some point Sinclair gets in bed. Alex's eyes flicker over her body. She keeps her underwear on, and her camisole. He is, in fact, naked, but that may simply be his preferred default sleeping mode, which was compromised for the sake of modesty and his roommates' senses of decorum at the BroHo. He holds the covers up for her to get under, and after she does, turns out the light; turns on his side to face her.
In the darkness, the warm hazel of his eyes is lost. They're simply dark, and intelligent, flickering between hers as she speaks.
"Yeah," he agrees quietly.
A little time passes. Then, slowly and carefully, as though she truly were wild, and might run away again at any second --
he moves closer to her, sliding across the bed, which is larger than his twinsized bed at the Brotherhood but smaller, far smaller, than the vast kingsized realm of comfort they shared briefly in the Copacabana Palace. A small startle runs through him when his leg finds hers under the covers; then he slides his shin over hers, her skin smooth against his, but nowhere near cool.
He lays his arm over her side, too. For a moment there's tension there. Then it releases, and his arm grows heavier, settles.
"Goodnight, Sinclair." This is a whisper. He closes his eyes.
[Sinclair] "Alex,"
this is said softly, a moment or two after he's closed his eyes. It isn't quite as late, but only by a couple of minutes: her clothes are on the floor or in the hamper or something now instead of hanging to dry, though she's still lying in bed in thin-strapped undershirt and boyshorts. She stayed quite still when he first moved closer to her, watching him steadily. As soon as his arm moves over her side, though, Sinclair shifts on the mattress, brings herself into a loose version of the sort of sleeping embrace they rested in -- rather intimately -- in his hotel in Rio. And a heart beat or two passes, and her eyes are still open as she whispers:
"would you undress me?"
She's looking at him when his eyes open, adding just as quietly: "We don't have to do anything. I just like how that feels."
[Alexander] So his eyes open again. He looks at her for a moment, sleepy already, sleepy as quick as that, with a child or an animal's ability to drop into sleep no matter how tense the situation, how awkward.
His eyes blink once, then again, slow. Then, without speaking, he reaches down, works her boyshorts off her hips. Draws them down her legs, then catches the waistband in his toes. Pulls them off and kicks them somewhere to the foot of the bed.
He moves closer to her, then, his leg threading between hers. His hands reach around behind her before he remembers: no bra. just camisole.
Alex rubs her back anyway, slow circles, soothing. He reaches under her shirt and pushes it up off her head. His hands roam her skin; the scarification intricate and odd under his fingertips; the rest of her so smooth. He cups her breast for a moment, then slides his arm around.
Draws her closer still. Holds her close and near and...
intimate. Dear.
"Good night," he murmurs softly, "Sinclair."
[Sinclair] The simple fact of the matter is this: he knows how Sinclair reacts to being touched, how it takes her but a moment to utterly melt into it, how quickly she becomes aroused when he lays his hands on her. And the simple fact is: she also means it, when she says they don't have to do anything, but that doesn't mean she isn't hoping. It doesn't mean that she's promising not to want, when sometimes it seems Sinclair is made up of nothing more than desire and violence and shocking moments of wisdom all held together by a marred and marked skin.
Her breath catches when he pulls her underwear off, and she looks down under the covers over their waists to watch Alex draw them down her thighs. Her hips lift from the mattress to help him, legs bending to help slip them out. She exhales, almost voicing some unknown sound, reacting to his moving closer by wrapping her leg around his, as though that is -- as she's thought before -- simply where she fits best. Not with her back to him, curled up so she doesn't seem threatening to him. Not with him lying as stiff as a board beside her, trying not to touch her. Like this.
Then he takes a little longer getting her camisole off, and it drives her slightly mad, the way he rubs her back. She lifts her arms over her head when he draws it upward, and her breasts bounce slightly as the fabric drags on them and then withdraws. She's breathing faster, and though she doesn't push Alex onto his back and maul him, Sinclair also doesn't try overmuch to pretend disinterest or even calm. He runs palms across her newly bared skin, and she shivers, though -- no. She's nowhere near cool to the touch.
When Alex cups her breast, almost thoughtlessly, in passing: his leg is between hers. He feels the faint shift as she starts to roll her hips forward, feels Sinclair stop herself as her arms come back down and wrap around him. As he wraps around her. She closes her eyes, steadying her breathing, laying entwined with him as tenderly as possible when there's an undeniable ache for him in her bones, in her pulse, between her legs.
A slow, careful exhale that hits his neck. "Goodnight, Alex."
come find me
13 years ago