lecture and be a jerk.

[Liadan] Lee hates hospitals.

There are no words with which she can describe how much she hates hospitals. She has been inside a hospital five times since her birth, and all but one of those times had been unsavory. Memories she wishes she could banish as easily as she does her one night stands, the lovers she left in hotels and clubs and cars around the globe.

They're there, though, running through her mind as she lays in her hospital bed, unable to sleep. She's on something she can't remember the name of, and while it doesn't exactly make the hurting in her back go away, she doesn't give a fuck about it. She wants...something. Her phone, a PSP, a DSi hell. She'd settle for an original GameBoy at this point.

They've got her facing the door, because Lee is always facing doors. Always watchful and wary, alert, attentive. Not so much now, with doctors and nursing staff and whoever coming in to check on her, check her bandages, check readings. Laying on her side, she doesn't quite doze.

She wants to go home.

[Alexander F. Vaughn] She's on her side, of course, because she got shot in the back. Maybe the bullet went through-and-through. More likely it splintered and bits of it nicked her viscerae, bounced off her bones. The trauma surgeon that put her back together shook his head as he pull fragment after fragment out of her. Can't believe the bitch ain't dead, he said, dropping the last one on a specimen tray. Close her up.

Now, not even twenty-four hours later, she's in a haze of medication, but doing pretty damn well all in all. She's not a Garou. She's half. That still counts for something. It counts for a lot.

There's a rap on her door. Alexander pokes his head in, then steps in altogether. Oh look: he has flowers. Big bright happy flowers, not roses or tulips or, god forbid, lilies; nothing with any symbolic meaning at all. He rolls up to the side of the bed and drops them in front of her. There's a card on it. It says in a childish hand, TO MOMMY. LOVE, JAY.

Alex pulls up a chair and drops down. He looks unfairly good: healthy, robust, strong, not wounded. It's arguable that his stupid fight caused the whole incident, and out of the three kin there, he's the one that got away totally unscathed. Fortune favors the assholes.

"Hey. You on morphine or something?" He snaps his fingers in her face a few times like she's an imbecile. Like maybe she got shot in the head and is now missing a good portion of her cortex. "You know who I am?"

[Liadan] The door creaks open and Lee glances that way. The figure that steps in is blurry, indistinct around the edges. Something about the way he moves, though. About the shape of the blur. It's familiar.

Without her glasses Lee looks, well, like Lee without her glasses. She still has that wide forehead, that same nose, those same shapely lips. She's a bit paler than usual, which is saying something. On a good day, some people would say that Lee is cute, or pretty. Not in a glamorous way. Not like the androgynous models she shoots, not like women like Danicka.

Today is not a good day.

She shifts on the bed. Not to sit up. She doesn't even shift very far, just enough to get dizzy and stop. Then someone's snapping fingers in her face. Lee swings for the offending hand, scowling.

"Get outta my face, asshole." Her hand drops back to the bed, comes to rest beside her face. They say the eyes are the window to the soul. Right now, Lee's are glassy, bleary, and she's obviously having trouble focusing on Alexander's face. "What are you doing here?"

[Alexander F. Vaughn] "What's it look like I'm doing? I've come to pay my last respects. They did tell you you're dying, right? Said you have like, twenty minutes to live. Yep."

WHAM! His palm hits the mattress, and then he barks laughter at her. "I'm just fucking with you. You're gonna be fine."

Sitting back, Alexander props a foot up on the wheeled base of her bed and looks around the room. He notes the flowers, one two three bouquets, plus his stolen ones by her face. "Well, I see I'm not the first cock in your pit." Yeah, he just said that. "Glad to see you had friends visit while I was otherwise detained. By which I mean, clapped in jail and subjected to horrid tortures.

"Don't worry," he adds in a loud stage whisper, "our secret is safe. I told them nothing."

[Liadan] She doesn't talk about the flowers, who they're from. He can read the cards if he wants. The smallest is from someone named Paul, the sentiment simple. The next from Elizabeth carries a different tone, has Xs and Os beneath the name. The biggest bouquet - and truly it's a monster, with lilies and roses and a few tiny carnations and an explosion of baby's breath - is signed by Henri, has a note written in French.

Alex is just fucking with her. He's boisterous and mobile and animated as ever and Lee can barely keep up. That's more annoying to her than the man himself. She reaches up to scrub at her face again.

"I tried to tell them you were defending me, but I might have dreamed that."

[Alexander F. Vaughn] Alexander, amazingly enough, is not nosy enough to look at her other flowers. It's possible he hasn't even looked at the card on the flowers he supposedly got her. He just tilts his chair back on two legs, props his feet up on the edge of her bed now, and cocks his head at her.

"Well, I sort of was. I was totally going to stab the big dude in the back as soon as he was past me. 'Cept then you and the blonde talked him out of it.

"Though, then you took off running. And I'd chalk that up to being a pussy, except you actually yelled at the dude with a gun to try to make him shoot you. Which, y'know. He did. But what I don't get is why you keep martyring yourself out for ... well. Me."

Typical: he thinks it's all about him.

[Liadan] "Pff," she says. It's a long, drawn out sibilant sound. "I didn't do it for you"

[Liadan] [oops, hello punctuation, there should be a period there]

[Alexander F. Vaughn] "Oh yeah? Then what do you do it for?" He smirks at her. It's out of focus; just a shift in the smear of his face that she can't really decode at her distance, in her drug haze. "The good shit they shoot you up with afterward?"

[Liadan] She can't see his face at all. Not just because she's near-sighted and her stylish wire-rimmed glasses are on the bedside table, lost somewhere amongst the flower formations. She's not looking at his face. She's looking at the indistinct shape she knows is his torso. "I didn't wan' 'im shooting at V anymore."

[Alexander F. Vaughn] "Well, same question then. What's with the constant martyrdom?"

[Liadan] "I don't know."

Which is different from what she said on the street, months and months ago when there was snow on the ground and Alexander kept insisting on giving her a ride home. On his motorcycle. In the snow. Before he learned that her apartment was within spitting distance of The Brotherhood.

"I wasn't really thinking. I just didn't want 'im shooting at V anymore."

[Alexander F. Vaughn] That makes him quiet for a while. She can't see his face clearly, isn't looking anyway, so it's impossible to tell what he thinks of this. Just the sound of his breathing for while, quiet and steady, and the steadier beep of monitors in the background. Opiates dull her sensations, make everything far away and muffled, but even so she can feel the dull heavy ache of injury, the tightness where her skin was cut open and sewn shut again. Surgery grew from butchers and barbers. Sometimes there's still little difference.

"Y'know," Alex says finally, serious for once, "you want someone to stop shooting at your friend, the best way to stop them is to bring them down first. Not put yourself in the line of fire."

On that note, he lets the front legs of his chair clap back down.

[Liadan] She lets out a laugh. It's groggy and muddled, and perhaps for the first time since that night in a motel so long ago, it's not sneering. It's not filled with sarcasm, with venomous hatred. Maybe it's the drugs, the injury, all of it.

"With what, stupid? I didn't have anything, and if I ran at him he was gonna shoot me in the face and I would've died." She looks up at his face, but all she can see are vague things. She can almost but not quite make out the shape of his eyes. She can tell that he has features like a nose and a mouth, a chin, hair. She can't quite tell what they're doing. He doesn't sound like he's sneering, though.

"I don't wanna die. It's harder to shoot a moving target so I ran."

[Liadan] "Maybe distract 'im so you could get him. One-two, pow."

[Alexander F. Vaughn] "So now you're telling me you were being a coward." He sounds skeptical. "Nevermind that most cowards don't wave their arms and go hey, look at me, shoot me! before running off. Oooor that you were ... teamworking with me. Nevermind that you running away and him chasing you means I'd have to chase him, and --

"Look, Liadan, that shit doesn't make much sense. And I don't need you to explain it to me, because I think you're nuts anyway and I don't expect you to make sense. I'm just saying. FYI. For future reference. Making yourself a bull's eye is about the least productive thing you can do, unless your purpose is to fulfill a deathwish."

[Liadan] "I told you I wasn't really thinking." I told you so. She starts to shrug her shoulder, pulls a face when the movement uses muscles attached the ones that were blown through, cut through, bruised and stitched back together. She's making a miraculous recovery and will likely be released in a few days. In fact, she'll be released tomorrow. Oh the perks of being not-completely-human. Not-completely-normal. She doesn't stop with the shrug, but slides her arms up to hug her pillow, make herself more comfortable.

"Did you just come to lecture me?"

[Alexander F. Vaughn] "Pretty much, yup. And to beat your roommate with flowers, but," he glances over her -- well, over her side, as she's prone, "it looks like you're in a single."

A pause. Then he shifts, starts to get to his feet. "I think maybe I oughta go now."

[Liadan] "Wait!" Lee lifts her head, would reach out her arm if she didn't know it was going to hurt in that weirdly disconnected way. She looks up at that vague and indistinct place where his face is, looks at him with reddish brows constricted, insistent. Almost panicked. She opens her mouth, closes it, and her face relaxes.

"Thanks. Y'know. For goin' after that guy. And for visiting even if it was just to lecture and be a jerk."

[Alexander F. Vaughn] Alexander does not, in fact, wait. That should surprise no one. He's at the door of her room when she says thanks, and that, that, does make him turn around. She can't see the skeptical rise of his eyebrow, nor how it lowers again after a moment.

He comes back across the room. Even blurred, his way of moving is familiar: that athletic, deliberately rolling gait that suggests he's bigger and stronger and tougher than he actually is. He comes to a stop by her bed, and then after a moment, he picks the stolen flowers up and sets them on her nightstand instead. Actually, it's her bedtray-cart, but same difference.

"Yeah," he says, offhand, perhaps a little awkward. "No problem." A little pause. "You get better soon, all right? I'll see you at Tribull."

[Liadan] Líadan frowns when he picks up the flowers and moves them away from her, but she doesn't comment on it. She doesn't thank him again, which could mean something.

There are things she could say to him, to this person with whom she's almost never done anything with except fight. She could tell him that she doesn't want to be left alone in this hospital room she hates, with nothing to do except stare at the multicolored scented things she knows were sent from friends who are currently in another state, stare at them and hope her meds will interrupt her sleep cycle. 2AM to 6AM. That's still a long way off. She could ask him to stay, or at least bring her a magazine or a book or a something from the hospital's gift shop. Something that will keep her occupied, something that won't leave her feeling so lonely. Hell, she could at least ask him to send along a message to someone at The Brotherhood, let them know where she is, ask someone to ask someone else to go feed her frog.

She doesn't, though. All she says is, "Yeah, okay," as she lays her head back on her pillow. She doesn't close her eyes until he's gone.

tiny.

[Unfortunate events] [Rules!
1: Post in alphabetical order, please! It helps me keep track of who is where and who we're waiting on.
2: I don't mind if you multitask! Just post in a timely manner. I'm anticipating about ten minutes per post, give or take a few minutes.
3: If I don't answer in chat, ask me in AIM. I respond well to AIM!
4: Get Out of Dead Free: Everybody gets one. One. Per character. If I accidentally kill you, or you die horribly, or you really Just Don't Want To Die, play your get out of dead free card. Once it's gone, though, it's gone. If you die in another one shot, you stay dead.
5: Have fun! Post forthcoming!

[Unfortunate events] Make sure he goes down in the second round, was the only thing he heard. It wasn't directed toward him, of course.

Of course, Alexander fucking Vaughan didn't go down in the second round. He didn't go down at all. He beat the shit out of that bantam weight pussy who had a right cross like his grandmother, and he won. Of course he won. He won because he was good at what he did, because he practiced, or maybe because he was just better than this shmuck someone had put him in the ring with.

Saturday night, he could have sworn he heard something whispered. Saw someone glaring. Cost someone money

Saturday night, he could have sworn he heard someone say Jesus fucking christ, I think he broke that guy's sternum.

Saturday night might have been a good night.

---

I don't care, just make it happen, was what Liadan Whelan didn't hear the men say in the distance. She had been doing her job. Doing something that she presumably enjoyed. Doing something she was very, very good at. taking pictures, that is. She was taking shots of the city.

Something artistic. Some upward, blurred shot of traffic or some building. People pretend to understand artistic intentions. For all the men in the car knew, Liadan was taking pictures of them. For all they knew, she was taking pictures of that model across the street, with her hair blowing in the breeze, who looked delightfully lost. Whose eyes were amber but her skin was dark, and her hair was darker. She had the kind of contrast that National Geographic photo and possibly the loveliest legs a woman could have. So very, very long, and making those over-priced heels look fabulous.

The men ruined Liadan's shot by pulling out. By then, she'd taken three quick photos in succession. By freak accident, she didn't delete them.

That was a problem, see.

----

What Danicka Musil was probably sick of was guys staring at her tits. Or maybe they were staring at her boyfriend, at the fact that he set them on-edge. She probably didn't care. or maybe she did, who knew.

For a brief moment some guy had talked to her outside fo the ladies room. Who does that? Talks to people in the ladies room when they've been powdering their nose or powdering their nose in a different way, or fixing their hair, or god forbid using the ladies room. Who does that?

Some idiot nursing a few broken ribs. Who made eye contact too long, who had a black eye coming in from the evening he said [Yeah, I work out, he said. MMA fighting. You know. He tried to sound tough, but obviously he wasn't any good at it or else he wouldn't be nursing what sounded like broken ribs]

He asks for her number, which she conveniently can't hear him do because she's leaving him by the ladies room. And goes on to finish enjoying her night. She doesn't think anything of it, or maybe she does. He leaves the club shortly thereafter, with more than his ribs injured.

---

Tonight is Thursday night.

By virtue of being Thursday, it sucks. The music on the radio sucks. The bartenders are hungover, and they suck. There are a complete lack of women in short enough skirts. Nothing is on sale at Barnes and Noble. Overall, there is nothing that goes right with Thursdays. It's worse than Monday. Finals were coming up. Reaching ever that much closer. Professors were worrying about their performance reviews.

All of this stuff doesn't matter, though, because across from a particular gym there is a halfway decent sandwich place with good food and bad security. Bad access control. The surveillance camera is all for show Caramelized onions. Fifty cent wings on Tuesdays. The cashier hates his job.

He's worked here for seven years, and has had to deal with seven years of guys like Alexander fucking Vaughan and worse. He's had fights break out over pickles. Pickles. Of course, not Alexander Vaughan. For some reason, the sandwich man kind of liked him.

Scrappy little shit won him twenty bucks last Saturday. Life was decent.

It was Thursday.

[Alexander] Saturday night was a damn good night.

Saturday night was all hot lights in a eight-sided chainlink cage, the roar of an riled-up crowd, the smack of lightly padded gloves on hard flesh, the spatter of sweat after a hit and the spatter of blood after a really good hit.

There are rules in MMA now, of course. There are steps being taken to make the whole thing more of a sport and less of a bloodsport. Less of a brawl. Less of a gladiator show where there was no such thing as throwing in the towel and 'timidity' was officially against the rules. There's still no unified governing body, though, and though more and more fights are being held in rings, Alexander always looks for the cagefights, always looks for the amateur matchups where managers didn't get in the way of fighters' egos, didn't protect fighters from taking on more than they could handle.

And then: Saturday nights are damn good nights.


The arena wasn't big. Maybe a few hundred unruly spectators packed in tight, yelling for violence. Bets and sidebets. Alexander's not a heavyweight, not the headlining fight, but he's a brutal close-range fighter, the type to clinch and pummel, the type to ground and pound. He gets popular with a bloodseeking crowd. He feeds off the energy; he's tireless and increasingly dominant; he's a showy, cocky bastard that frankly wins more by viciousness and talent than by tactic and skill.

Someone gets pissed off, watching that shit. And someone gets even more pissed off because he doesn't go down in round 2 like he's supposed to. Someone gets really fucking pissed because even without a mic pointed at his mouth half the arena could hear Alexander fucking Vaughn laughing after breaking some poor douchebag's ribs, or sternum, or face. All the arena could see him climbing the walls of the cage, screaming bloody victory out at a roaring crowd.

And THAT'S how it's going down! Yeah! Yeah! You like that? You like that?

Someone does not like that.


Now it's Thursday. And what little Changing blood he has means he always heals faster than the other guy, which means he was back jumping rope and doing laps on Sunday, back to his regular regimen by Monday. By Thursday he's fighting fit, waiting for Saturday, and he's freshly showered and ready to head home where he has no food, so he stops by the sandwich joint where the sandwich man kind of likes him and gives him free pickles.

And there he is, parked on top of a stool at the bar running the length of the window out to Grant Park. It's nice and warm in Chicago today, and Alexander's street clothes aren't much different from his workout gear: white cargo shorts, a red muscle tee with bigass arm holes to show off as much of his obsessively toned body as possible. He has ipod headphones in his ears, and bobs his head as he chows down on a big BLT.

[Liadan] Líadan walks across the way from Tribull to the sandwich shop. It's Thursday, and Thursday is one of her kickboxing days. She worked hard today, pushed herself to make up for missing class Monday night for work. The fashion photographer hates when work gets in the way of this commitment, this thing she does for herself. It's evening, and after her class let out she left her gear at the gym and jogged through the park. Not far, just enough to get her heart racing and to feel alive, feel free.

Now, she's showered. She's dressed in khaki capris and a t-shirt, her gym bag slung over her shoulder. There are those old and beat up Chucks, black and white and faded. Her damp hair is pulled to the nape of her neck. It'll dry funny that way, but she doesn't care. The only place she's going after this is her apartment, to look over photos or play Guitar Hero by herself.

Checking messages on her phone, she pushes open the door to the sandwich shop and heads for the counter.

[Danicka] Miss Musil does not remember the man on Saturday who wanted her number. She didn't ignore him; gave him a fake number and a smile and all the rest, slipped away while he was getting them a couple of drinks. It is not a rare occurrence. She gave it no weight.

Miss Musil does not train at Tribull. Her gym is more upscale, focused on fitness and sculpting rather than mixed martial arts. There's yoga classes and pilates and spinning and dance and personal trainers and nutritionists and everybody wears lululemon athletic, including Miss Musil. When she sees her personal trainer and nutritionist and takes her yoga classes, of course.

The reason fights break out over pickles at this sandwich shop, far from her gym, is that the pickles are actually quite good. Danicka smirked at the none-too-subtle pregnancy joke when she asked for extra pickles, took her sandwich and her gym bag outside, and sipped VitaminWater on a patio table, reading Crime and Punishment. In Russian.

She too, has those ubiquitous earbuds planted against either side of her skull, though they're connected to the iPhone sitting beside her plate. She doesn't see Lee go inside.

[Alexander] "So," Alexander pipes up the second Danicka sits down -- without looking away from his own sandwich at that -- "are you actually reading that, or just carrying it around because it makes you look smart?"

[Liadan] [percept + alert]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 3, 5, 9 (Failure at target 6)

[Danicka] [Perception + Alertness]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 10 (Failure at target 6) Re-rolls: 1

[Danicka] [Perception + Intuition]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 5, 5, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Liadan] [percept + int]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 5, 6, 6 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Alexander] PA!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 5, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Alexander] PI!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 8, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Danicka] The woman in the pink and white athletic gear doesn't look up at first. Then she notices a shadow, and flicks her eyes up and over, and then reaches up and takes out one of her earbuds. "What was that?" she asks blithely. She recognizes him, obviously. They've gotten into the same tangles often enough that she has a general idea of what to expect of him... both in conversation and in a fight.

[Alexander] Bluntly, and skeptically: "Can you actually read that?"

[Liadan] The other Kinfolk don't notice the tall redhead slipping into the sandwich shop and sidling up to the counter to make her order. Lee wouldn't know how good the pickles are here if it weren't for the fights. Lee hates pickles. The cashier make think the less of her for her taste in pickle-less sandwiches, but she doesn't care.

She takes up her plate with a smile, polite and just barely reaching those dark eyes. Slipping her phone into a pocket of her gym bag, Lee makes her way back out to the patio. A glance is spared for the two sitting out there. Danicka gets a smile in greeting. Alex gets...the same. Maybe he expects her to snarl and lay into him. Or not, considering she hasn't paid him the least bit of attention for several months, despite going to the same gym.

The smile is brief, Lee's attention caught and held by the car pulling up. Something -- she doesn't know what -- doesn't feel right. Her hand tenses around the edge of her plate, and she ducks her head away. Keeping the car in her peripheral, she heads for an open patio table.

[Unfortunate events] There's a car that rolls up, and he doesn't give a shit. What-ev, you know? His knuckles hurt for some reason. That's just one car out of a dozen, but when people get out of it, Alex notices something. They guy that gets out of the back looks familiar. The other two don't, but thelittle guy- (heh) he's the familiar one. Doesn't breathe too deep.

And THAT's how it's going down!

Somehow, he gets a feeling that this might have something to do with not going down in the second. And that this? Might not go so well...
to Alexander

[Danicka] She doesn't notice any car. Just a sense like hairs rising on the back of her neck, windchimes tinkling in the distance. If she pays it mind, it doesn't show; Danicka lifts an eyebrow at Alexander, then looks down at her book and says: ""&+1056;&+1072;&+1079;&+1074;&+1077; &+1101;&+1090;&+1086; &+1089;&+1077;&+1088;&+1100;&+1077;&+1079;&+1085;&+1086;? &+1069;&+1090;&+1086; &+1085;&+1077; &+1089;&+1077;&+1088;&+1100;&+1077;&+1079;&+1085;&+1086;. &+1069;&+1090;&+1086; &+1087;&+1088;&+1086;&+1089;&+1090;&+1086; &+1092;&+1072;&+1085;&+1090;&+1072;&+1079;&+1080;&+1103;, &+1095;&+1090;&+1086;&+1073;&+1099; &+1088;&+1072;&+1079;&+1074;&+1083;&+1077;&+1095;&+1100; &+1089;&+1077;&+1073;&+1103;, &+1080;&+1075;&+1088;&+1091;&+1096;&+1082;&+1080;! &+1044;&+1072;, &+1084;&+1086;&+1078;&+1077;&+1090; &+1073;&+1099;&+1090;&+1100;, &+1101;&+1090;&+1086; &+1080;&+1075;&+1088;&+1091;&+1096;&+1082;&+1072;."

No, not just 'says'. Reads aloud, for him, from Chapter One.

Danicka reaches for her VitaminWater, which is when she sees Lee, and gives the redhead a smile. "Lee!" she calls, and waves her over.

[Alexander] "Huh," says Alexander, suitably impressed. "See I'd answer you in Russian but my spoken Russian sucks."

Then Danicka calls out to Lee, smiling, and Alex's head turns her way. He kicks out a chair from under the table. "Babydoll!" Overemoted joy, there. "Sit down! Catch up! It's -- "

he trails off. He frowns at the car pulling up, and while Lee's keeping it peripheral and Danicka's blissfully unaware, Alexander stands up, pops the last of a pickle into his mouth and opens his arms wide. It's about as genuine as his greeting to Liadan. It's posturing, not unlike a gorilla beating his chest when a rival's sighted.

"Robbie. I worried about you, man. How're the ribs?" His eyes flick down, searching the other's shirt for telltale signs of bandaging. There's something alert, balanced, ready about the kinsman.

[Unfortunate events] [Tiny Robbie: WP: oww, my pride!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 6, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Liadan] Danicka calls her name. Lee's head snaps back toward her, and she shifts her stance to better see her. Frowning slightly, she moves to join her. "Hey-" and Alex is kicking out a chair for her, greeting her with the old nickname, which is met with a disbelieving quirk of one red brow. "Hey, V."

Then Alex is rising, heading for the car. Lee sets her plate on the table, watching him for a moment as he goes. There's something off here, and it'd just be like Alexander to go poke danger right in the eye.

"I think that car ruined one of my shots last weekend," she says, offhand. Odd, that in a city as big as Chicago, the car that ruined her shot would carry a passenger known to Alex. She shrugs, trying to shake off the strange feeling.

[Unfortunate events] [Chico: Hey, I know you!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 5, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Unfortunate events] Rolls up. Rolls up with a strong walk, on a man that's a little over five and a half feet tall. It was hard to look hard, roll hard, talk hard when you were a little man. He got enough of that shit. Enough that people called him tiny. Enough that he went down too hard, too fast, didn't stand a fucking chance. It's hard to look like you're a badass when you're not quite five seven.

He's no David, and Alex sure as shit ain't Goliath.

One of the men with them is tall. Looks like he used steroids for too long. Has tear drop tattoos under the right eye. Two, one's colored in. One isn't. Can't tell what the rest of his tattoos are, one's faded on his neck, nice script. The others are hidden under clothes.

He looks too long, too hard at Liadan. He's really trying to place her. The other man is lanky, but sturdy. Looks like he could run a marathon, is surprisingly clean, and surprisingly tan for his eyes to be so blue. He looks at the redhead, nudges the larger man beside him when he's looking at Danicka. Says something.

They both laugh.

"Chill, Tiny-"
"-I ain't tiny, motherfucker-"
"let's just take this bitch and move," Chico says. the man with the tattoos. Chico.

The blue eyed one smiles something too predatory at Danicka, "sorry you gotta see this, princess."

And things... advance.

[Alexander] "Whoa. Robbie." Alex takes a few steps forward, arms still open in that open not-open, friendly not-friendly gesture. He glances at the other two but speaks to 'Tiny'. "What the fuck's going on here?"

Passing their neighbor's table, Alexander lets his hands drop, and casually -- at least he hopes it's casual, and subtle, and surreptitious -- snags a steak knife from the edge. He keeps it folded against his forearm. Out of sight, like.

[Danicka] One earbud still in, Danicka decides -- now that Lee is joining them -- to take it out, turn off her music, and close her book. She puts the iPhone back in its sueded case, winding up the cord to her headphones with practiced motions, then puts it in the outer pocket of her gym bag as Lee is taking the kicked-out chair.

She is, it seems, blissfully unaware. She glances at the car Lee indicates, flicks her eyebrows up as Alex wanders off to go greet the bruised man, and frowns when she sees him. "I think --"

Doesn't get that far. She lifts an eyebrow at the man who calls her 'Princess'. "Oh, I've probably seen worse," she says mildly, and leans over to put her book in her gym bag.

[Liadan] Men step out of the car with the too large trunk. One heads for Alex, two are headed towards herself and Danicka. Lee tenses. Her chin dips down, and she stares at him, usually warm dark eyes hard, narrowed behind her glasses.

Then she takes in a breath, lets it out slowly. Her muscles relax, her body loosens. The tall redhead has to lean forward or bend at the knees to lower her plate to Danicka's table. She leans, sets it down, lets her gym bag slide from her shoulder and down to where she can grip the strap.

As Danicka is putting away her things, and Alex is surreptitiously grabbing up a weapon, Lee leans again, lower her bag like she's actually going to set it down.

[Unfortunate events] "It ain't none of your fucking business," he replies. Tiny, that is. the one that has a Great Dane's bark and a dachshund's temperament, "I'll deal with your shit later."

A table separates Tiny from Liadan, from Danicka, and from the man who he seems content to be fuming at. Chico steps forward, and his eyes and attention and intentions are on Liadan. Both he and Blue eyes seem to make no attempt to hide this fact, though Blue eyes takes a few steps towards the street and forward. The larger man, Chico, takes the direct route, and maybe five or six feet separate him and Alex.

Blue eyes ups the ante. Blue eyes reaches into his coat for something.

This can't be good.

Danicka bets she's seen worse. "Then I'm sorry," he replies to her, "you might wanna duck."

[Alexander] Alex looks over his shoulder at Liadan. Then he shrugs at her. "Sorry, babydoll."

He steps out of the way, leftward, leaving an open corridor between Danicka and himself for Chico to head down.

[Liadan] Alex shrugs at Lee. Her attention is focused completely on Chico, making a direct line for the photographer. She doesn't let go of her bag as it gets closer to the ground. Chico comes closer, Blue Eyes reaches for something while they're all out in the open on a nice Thursday afternoon. Lee adjusts her grip on the strap of her gym bag.

[Danicka] [+6]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 7

[Liadan] [+6]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 10

[Alexander] +7!
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2

[Unfortunate events] Tiny: +7
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9

[Unfortunate events] Chico: +5
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5

[Unfortunate events] Blue eyes: +5
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1

[Unfortunate events] Blue eyes: 6
Alex: 9
Chico: 10
Danicka: 13
Liadan: 16
Tiny: 17

[Unfortunate events] Blue eyes, good ol' blue eyes, is a steady hand, a good shot, and standing close enough to the street that if some dumbass checked the curb and drove too fast, they might just take him out. Unfortunately, no one's driving too fast, and he's aiming a gun at Liadan Whelan.

He's not shooting. At least, not yet. Keeping that hand mighty steady, though...

[Alexander] Alexander, having stepped aside, is not actually eyeing Blue Eyes and his gun warily. He's almost too calm. Most mortals faced with a gun would be cringing, screaming, hitting the deck.

The kinsman bides his time. His eyes follow Tiny and Chico, waiting for them to step past him.

[action: held! will accept +1 diff if changed later.]

[Unfortunate events] Chico steps around and between the two short(ish) men. He's too damned calm. He's too damned old for this. He's watching too warily for this. He takes his eyes off of Alex, off of Blue eyes, and he looks at Danicka.

He folds his arms across his chest. Too tall, too built like a mountain, and building himself up to be more imposing than he probably is.

[action: Be scary! Try and intimidate Danicka (because scaring people who are a foot shorter than you is SO HARDCORE!)]

[Danicka] Considering that they must seem to be Mere Mortals to these men, the Kinfolk on the sidewalk in front of the sandwich shop are incredibly calm. Danicka leans over to put her book away and a gun is drawn. She glances up as Alex steps aside, as Chico swaggers up and...stands there. She looks at Blue Eyes and his gun.

"Oh, this is ridiculous," she says, with a sigh of exasperation. What she removes from her gym bag is hidden in her hand as she straightens up, still seated. She looks at Chico. "It's broad daylight, for Christ's sake. If someone in there," she gestures at the sandwich shop, "hasn't already called the police, someone at the gym across the street probably has. What on earth are you two thinking?"

[Reflexive-ish: Talking. Could totally be willing to roll to persuade.
1a. Also drawing a sense dep dart out of her bag, crafty-like.
1b. Held.]

[Liadan] As Chico makes his way down the corridor opened by Alexander, Líadan straightens. There's a man aiming a gun for her, but Lee has other plans for the day.

Not dying is pretty high on the list.

Danicka's talking. Lee is studying Chico, eying the big man over for a weakness, something visible she, slimmer and significantly lighter, might be able to use against him.

[Reflexive: Percept + Subt on Chico
1: Held]

[Unfortunate events] Tiny can't wait. Tiny is... well... being Tiny. Robbie. The guy who got his ass beat last week. He's fuming, he's more than fuming. He's listening to Danicka and he rolls his eyes, his ire burns, and he growls It's a little too feral for someone his size.

He looks at Chico, who seems to be faltering a little, who hasn't had his pride smashed. He pushes past him, a lot faster than he seemed. He had the jump this time.

"Shoulda gone down in the fucking second-"
"CHILL, TINY!" Blue eyes calls at him,

Tiny ain't listening

[Actions!
1a- Ruuuuuun at Alex
1b: Punch to the face!
1c: knee to the ribs]

[Unfortunate events] [1a: I'm runnin!
1b: I'm punchin'! In the face (called shot): dex4+brawl3= 7 - 4 = 3, diff 8]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 6, 6 (Success x 1 at target 8) [WP]

[Alexander] [redeclare:
1a. knife Chico in the kidneys!
b. grapple Tiny
c. knife up until the sternum!]

[Unfortunate events] [str3+called shot 2 - 1 = 4]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Alexander] [until? UNDER.]

[Alexander] [soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Unfortunate events] Tiny punches Alex in the face, and it's suddenly a reminder of why he lost that fight in the first place. So, he knees him in the chest. Or wherever it'll hit.

[Unfortunate events] [Knee!]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 1, 3 (Botch x 1 at target 7)

[Unfortunate events] [Self damage!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 6, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Unfortunate events] [OWW!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 5, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Unfortunate events] Of course, this doesn't exactly work. Instead of actually hitting him, he sort of bounces off and ends up falling on his ass. The man's pride is more injured than his rear end is, though now he's on the ground, looking up between Chico and Alexander fucking Vaughn.

Man, this week sucked.

[Liadan] It only takes a second, maybe two, for Lee to study her opponent. Searching for any imbalance of weight placement, something obvious that she can attack to her advantage.

[percept (attentive) + subt (finding weaknesses) lookin' for something I can uuuuuuse on youuuuu]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Liadan] A reddish brow quirks as she stares at the man. Lee shifts her position, moves however she needs to to put the hulking man between herself and the wouldbe shooter.

"Hey. You. Why are you letting them do this? She's right, you know, someone has to have called the cops by now. Got your license plate. Alla that."

[redeclare! Talking while moving]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Danicka] [Reflexive:
Chico, you are retarded.
Manipulation (Convincing) + Leadership (makes the most sense to me)]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6) Re-rolls: 2

[Unfortunate events] [WP: why the fuck am I doing this?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 9, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Unfortunate events] "Man? Fuck y'all. Fuck alluh y'all. I ain't goin' back no where for y'all punk ass bitches," he says. Chico throws his hands up, He takes a step back and turns down the street.

"This is a bunch of bullshit," and it seems that Chico?

Is going home.

[Unfortunate events] [Chico: action change: Going the fuck home!]

[Danicka] [1a. Drawing sense dep dart out of back/concealing in hand. Not activating yet.
1b. Moving to door of sandwich shop, yelling in at a man sitting at a back table: "You! Call 9-1-1!"]

[Alexander] Alexander: laughs in Tiny's face as he goes down in a heap. In the same motion, rears back to stomp -- and we do mean STOMP -- on Tiny's crotch.

Could've been worse. Could've been a knife jammed into Chico's kidneys, but the big man had the bright idea to up and go home now. Could've also been a knife point to Tiny's heart, which, present sensory input notwithstanding, would've been a whole lot worse. He follows it up with a vicious kick to the adam's apple, and all the time he's yelling:

"Know what I love about a good old street brawl, Robbie? No DQ's. OH! That's gotta HURT! Want another one? Huh? OH!"

That time it's a kick right in the face.

[redeclaring since tiny's on the ground now and Chico's routing:

1a. targeted stomp of OWness
b. targeted throat kick
c. kick!]

[Alexander] 1a. -3 dice, +1 diff (redec), +2 diff (targeted), -2 diff (grounded foe)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 7, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 7)

[Alexander] str+1+2(suxx)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 6, 6, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[Alexander] [er, +2 for low blow!]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Unfortunate events] Ow!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 6, 7, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Alexander] ignore the extra 2 dice -- wrong diff on the attack!

b. throat! -4 dice.
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 4, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 8)

[Alexander] [str +1 +1(succ) +2]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 6, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Unfortunate events] [Fuck!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 5, 7, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Alexander] c. OH WAIT. kick in the ribs. THE BROKEN ONES! -5 dice.
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 3, 7 (Failure at target 9)

[Unfortunate events] He gurgles a rather unpleasant sound. Tiny looks like he might throw up. And he just might, actually. He might puke up his ever-loving guts because of all of this. That is not important. What is important is that he's curled up in the fetal position.

That last kick sails over Tiny's ribcage.

Thank God he's small.

[Unfortunate events] Blue eyes suddenly finds himself without people to deal with, or to watch his back. This shit got real. Fast. Ever the people pleaser, he barks at Tiny and Chico

"Get your asses up and back here, this ain't naptime!"

Screw aiming.

This shit just got real.

[Action change! 3rb for Alex, 1 shot to Danicka]

[Unfortunate events] [3rb! Dex3+firearms3+3= 9 - 2 = 7, diff 8]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 4, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 8)

[Unfortunate events] [4+1=5 (lethal)]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 5, 7 (Failure at target 6)

[Unfortunate events] Aaand second shot! -3
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 3, 8 (Success x 2 at target 7) [WP]

[Unfortunate events] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Danicka] [Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 3, 7 (Failure at target 6)

[Unfortunate events] The first shot fails to do any damage to the man wailing on Tiny, or rather, the first three shots. It's that fourth one, aimed into the blonde woman who said to call 9-1-1, rings true, and lands square in her stomach, a couple inches above her belly button.

She smells gunpowder, and it takes a second before she might look down and notice dark, dark blood trickling from her stomach.

[Unfortunate events] Blue eyes
Alex
Chico (leaving)
Danicka (Stunned)
Lee
Tiny (stunned)

[Unfortunate events] Blue eyes levels the cun again, squeezes three shots off again at Alex, then a fourth on Lee.

[action
1a: 3rb: Alex
1b: Shoot Lee]

[Alexander] "Fuck!" Now there's a flinch and a duck, hands flying instinctively over his head. Alex's eyes swing between Tiny and Danicka, both on the ground now. One's moaning and rolling around and clutching his balls. The other's bleeding.

"Are you shitting me?" Alexander fucking Vaughn can't shut up even when people pull guns out. "Tiny Robbie here wants to get his rocks off and next thing I know you're popping people off? What the fuck! Is she dead? Who the fuck are you people?"

[1a. advance on blue eyes!
b. let's do that shiv to the heart thing!
c. again!]

[Unfortunate events] People are firing shots, and Chico, now, is hauling ass away from all of this.

[action: LEAVING!]

[Danicka] It's been a long time since she was shot and the wounds weren't instantly absorbed by the effects of a bloody bandage. It's been a long time since a shot aimed at her has hit, period. Danicka is in shock for a moment, though her body responds instantly. Blood begins to pour from her, and she looks down at the exit wound on her front, realizing she's already pressed her hands to her midsection,

and she hasn't realized that she's falling until she hits the ground, knees cracking on the pavement, body crumpling against the side of the sandwich shop. There's blood spray across the glass, across the concrete, and she's already drenched. Her expensive yoga clothes are ruined. That jacket alone cost a hundred and twenty dollars.

She exhales heavily, and opens her eyes, turning over and looking at the guy who just shot her. A bizarre thought flashes through her mind, the imagine of an acorn in the process of spouting, and something very similar to the rage that fuels their cousins runs through her.

"You son of a bitch," she spits, all venom and English, and her eyes turn to poison.

[-1WP to ignore stun
1a. crawl back to gym bag
1b. -1WP for BB]

[Liadan] Shots go off, and Lee flinches. And when she gets a chance to look around, she sees

Danicka. Shot and bleeding from her stomach. Lee drops her gym bag. Glares at the man with the gun. "Son of a bitch. I'm the one you're after, right, you cocksucking motherfucker? Come and get me!"

[Reflexive?: Hurling insults/taunting
Action: Run east (away from Chico)]

[Liadan] [manip + exp: YOUR MOTHER IS A HAMSTER AND YOUR FATHER SMELLS OF ELDERBERRIES]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 6, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 5)

[Unfortunate events] [WP: Oh you BITCH! Resist!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 7, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Alexander] 1a. mvmt!
b. stab! +2 diff for targeting, -4 dice
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 5, 8 (Failure at target 6)

[Alexander] c. let's do that again. +WP!
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6) [WP]

[Alexander] [str +1(succ) +2(sfx)]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Unfortunate events] [soak?]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 4, 8 (Failure at target 8)

[Unfortunate events] [Aaand +1 diff to changing targets (sorry, Lee!)]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 8)

[Unfortunate events] Damage:
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[Liadan] [Soak?]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 8)

[Unfortunate events] And another shot at Lee!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 4, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Unfortunate events] Damage?
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 5, 7, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Liadan] [do it again, girl!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 9, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 8)

[Unfortunate events] The shot nails Lee in the back, and it's enough that she falls to her knees. She hits the ground, blood starts to poo. The second shot should have killed her. Fianna are made of stronger things than muscle and skin. She's kicked a Black Spiral to death-

What's a gun in comparison?

In the distance, they start to hear sirens. Apparently, someone did call 9-1-1

[Unfortunate events] [Blue eyes: Oh shit! Run away! Homeboy just stabbed me!]

[Unfortunate events] [when we read this transcript? let it be known that blood starts to pool. Not poo.]

[Alexander] "You bitch! Get back here!" For once, that's all the comment Alex has right now.

[1a. chase and stab!
b. cut throat!]

[Unfortunate events] Chico is, at this moment, nowhere in sight.

[Danicka] [1a. draw and load
1b. 3rb on blue eyes]

[Liadan] [1a: Get up
1b: Stagger on, grumbling and swearing like an old man]

[Unfortunate events] Tiny hauls himself up to his feet. Or, rather, tries to haul himself up to his feet. He's not walking the way he should, and he's white as Hell... but it's hard to tell whether or not it's from the gunshots or it's because of the fact that someone almost died, or because he just realized how in over his head he was.

Whatever it was, Robbie turned tail and ran. Ran about as fast as he could at that.

[Danicka] [1b. 3rb -3]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 3, 3, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 7) [WP]

[Danicka] [Damage! 4 + 3]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 6, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Unfortunate events] Soak?
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 7, 8 (Success x 1 at target 8)

[Alexander] a. stab! -2
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 4, 6 (Success x 2 at target 4)

[Alexander] str+1!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 6, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Unfortunate events] Soak?
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 5, 9 (Failure at target 8)

[Alexander] b. vicious throatslitting move! +2 diff
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 5, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Alexander] str +1!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 6, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Unfortunate events] The sight itself is a dismal one. There's blood everywhere, people are getting shot, and Alexander Vaughn is chasing a man down with a utensil with the intent of taking him out. The man leaves as fast as he can, but it seems that others are intent on finishing things up.

This is Chicago. This is self-defense. This was a straight up attack from one party to the other. They might get their pictures in the paper, marked as heroes. Or better yet, end up as internet memes. However, they aren't looking for fame of any kind, or for anything like that-

Or, conversely, the cops might be rounding the corner in time to see a redheaded female shuffling away from a scene. To watch Alexander fucking Vaughn slit a man's throat, and to see Danicka Musil, covered in blood with no wound in sight.

By the time the body falls, the other two men are nowhere in sight and the kinfolk can see the flashing lights.

... suffice to say, Thursdays sucked.

[Danicka] Her gun is registered.

She's bloodsoaked and there are witnesses on two sides of the street that saw her get shot and fall.

Danicka hears sirens and begins to quietly, invisibly panic. She breathes normally, and her eyes and face are placid, but three rounds went off from her nine millimeter into that man over there, and her blood is everywhere and there isn't a fucking mark on her. There's bulletholes in her clothing and there's not a fucking mark on her.

She exhales, and inhales, and exhales again. "Shit."

[Alexander] "Shit."

Alex seems to concur. There's a dead body at his feet. There's a bloody steak knife in his hand. There are a lot of staring sandwichers, and there are sirens approaching, and he's never getting free pickles here again.

"Shit," he says again, and turns, and jogs over to the blonde, and the redhead, and both of them are shot but one isn't bleeding anymore, and --

"Is she all right?" Lee, that is. Without waiting for an answer, he goes on, low: "I think I killed him. And I think yelling obnoxious shit is going to look bad when I plea self-defense. So if I end up in jail, can one of you bail me out? And testify if I end up in court?" And raising his voice: "Hey, call 911 again and tell them to send an ambulance!"

[Danicka] "Yeah," she exhales, when Alex asked to be bailed out. She's casting about with her eyes for Lee, and if there weren't cops coming she'd heal her, if this was a normal fight --

sick, that for her 'normal' means fomori, means spirals, means Garou cleaning up. Not this.

-- she could get away with having healed herself. Danicka doesn't bother to try and put away the gun. She safeties it, and blinks a few times. "I'll be bailing myself out, too, anyway, I think."

[Liadan] Lee is not fine.

She had made it a decent distance when that first shot ripped into her back, bringing her to her knees. It surprised her. Shocked her. And that gave her just enough time to pull herself to her feet and try to carry on, try to keep drawing the fire away from Danicka and Alexander. Her pace slows to a halt, and she turns to look back over the damage. Alex is fine. Danicka's fine. The bad guys are down, for the most part. Lee would head back to the others, but first she needs to stop, catch her breath.

She slumps onto a bus stop bench, starts to lean back, but stops. Shifts. It hurts to sit, hurts to breathe. She slumps, and she waits for someone to call her a damn ambulance.

it's good. it's very good.

[Sinclair] No phone call. No warning. Just a banging on Alex's door shortly -- an hour maybe -- before his usual bedtime on Wednesday night, and the heaviness of the air in his hallway that the twin of a Philodox may know as Rage and that most of humanity can only call the willies.

[Alex] "Go 'way," comes his voice, muffled by door and the handful of twizzlers stuck in his mouth, "I'll pay the rent on Monday!"

Then about ten seconds later there's a thump of feet, then some heavy steps. The door flies open. Still gnawing on a twizzler, Alex quirks an eyebrow at Sinclair. "Huh. 'Sup?"

[Sinclair] Her hair's in a high ponytail, the honey-wheat ends hanging straight down. Her jean jacket is on over a hoodie which is on over a t-shirt with Grover on it, and the belt around her jeans is black and studded with random grommets. Her sneakers are magenta and yellow. There's an apple pie in her hands and a Safeway bag hanging from her fingers, with a carton of vanilla ice cream plainly to be seen through the thin plastic.

"I am the worst girlfriend ever," she announces, and holds the pie out.

[Alex] "No you're not," Alex says, all matter of fact. His chest is bare. He's in boxer shorts. Also, he offers her a Twizzler. And ungnawed-on one. On his inordinately large flatpanel TV, some FPS is paused, some monster's head frozen in the act of exploding from a close-range headshot. He takes the pie and lifts the lid, promptly chipping a piece off with his finger and eating it. "Mmm, apple. My favorite ever, cept maybe for pecan. Want me to stick it in the oven for a few?"

[Sinclair] She has her hands full, so Sinclair opens her mouth and chomps down on the Twizzler when it's offered, wiggling it around til it hangs out of the corner of her mouth like an extra-long, cherry-red, very limp cigarette, and talks around it: "I so am," she argues.

He takes the pie, she carries the bag inside and closes his door behind her. Sinclair almost flickers a smile when he says apple's his favorite, after pecan. "Dude, I knew I should have made a pecan pie. And: yeah."

The kitchen is small enough that there's some maneuvering to be done for him to go to the oven and Sinclair to go to the freezer to put away the ice cream. She closes the top of the fridge, turning to him to wait for the oven door to get closed again, and frowns pensively. "I missed your birthday."

[Alex] "Daw," he leans over to shove the pie in the oven, tossing the box up on the counter. "I don't care, 'clair. Hah," he shuts the oven with his foot, simultaneously programming it on the control panel under the microwave, "that rhymes. Anyway, I was busy with taxes. You'd be amazed how long it takes when your income comes from 24 different sources."

Then he turns toward her, and she's closing the fridge, and he wrapping his arms around her in a big gruff bear hug. "C'mere," all affectionate, biting gently at the arch of her ear, nuzzling her cheek. "Rrrgh."

[Sinclair] There's no box for the pie, in fact. The pan is extremely high-end, though it's doubtful Alex would notice such a thing. She ganked it from the Loft. It's entirely possible she was quite open about why she was making a mess of Katherine Bellamonte's kitchen: I forgot my boyfriend's birthday and I am atoning. With pie, said as viciously as if she were preparing to go to war.

Occasionally, it's not hard to see Sinclair growing up in Kansas, going to church on the weekends, preparing for cheerleading bake sales. Then her eyes glint, and it's impossible to even imagine such things.

"Liar," she says fondly, moving into his arms a bit more delicately, if such a person as she could be called 'delicate' even in the most graceful of motions. She holds onto his arms, and then she wraps hers around him and closes her eyes, exhales, bends her head to the side while he growls and nips and nuzzles playfully. Warmly.

"You did your taxes in January like smart people," she recites, remembering some chat conversation, or text message, or something or other. Sinclair nuzzles him back, making a similar rrgh noise in a slightly higher register. She bites his neck, grazing him with her teeth, a slow scrape. "I'm sorry I didn't come over or anything, all the same." Now her nose, stroking gently where she bit him, her breathing steady. "My time sense was all screwed up for awhile after my challenge."

[Alex] There's a short silence; something that's not quite tension, closer to stillness, rippling through him. Then he tightens his arms a little, shivers when she bites him, then soothes the bite -- gentle as it was.

"Okay," he admits, "I just did my usual thing. I don't really celebrate my birthdays, anyway."

What he might as well tell her, but doesn't -- and wouldn't -- is no one else celebrated either. He might as well tell her -- but wouldn't -- no one else in this city even knew. He might as well tell her -- but never would -- I actually don't have a lot of friends.

People he knows, sure. Sparring partners and workout buddies and asshole gamer death-squad teammates, sure. People he'd actually call friends, that he'd rely on In Case Of Emergency? Not a whole lot. Very few. She's one of them.

What he says instead: "I mean, it's just another lap around the sun."

-- which isn't actually an invitation for pity or comfort. Or false cheer. The nonchalance is real; Sinclair isn't the most perceptive of women (or wolves), but then, Alex also can't lie worth shit. He's actually worse than she is. There are infants that lie better than he does. He lets go, then, grins at her a little crookedly, and laces his fingers through hers.

"Why was your time sense all screwy, anyway?"

[Sinclair] Right now Sinclair is pressed up against him, close more because she wants to be than because the kitchen is so tiny. She's wearing multiple layers, some soft and thin, some stiff and thick. But she can feel that stillness, not-quite-tension, and knows it for simple awareness of his reality setting in for a moment. He admits he lied, and she's pulled back enough to see his face. So he can see hers: Sinclair's mouth turns up gently at one corner. She's often gentle with him. Gentler than she has to be. Gentler than he would've expected. Gentler, even, than he needs.

And she leans forward and kisses him between his confession that he doesn't really celebrate and his feeling that it's just another lap around the sun. Still, she holds him a little longer and that kiss does linger a moment and she's warm and soft and any minute now that pie she made is going to start smelling like oh my fucking god.

It's kind of comforting.

"It's a chance to celebrate your life," she says, half-arguing, half... just telling him why she gives a damn even if he doesn't. "And that's something I'd... y'know. Want to do. And be a part of."

The awkward sentimentality of it makes her laugh slightly, as he's taking her hand. She holds his, and swings their arms slightly, humming a couple of notes thoughtfully. "Cuz I was in the spirit world for awhile, learning things. And time passes funny there sometimes, when there's Time at all. I sort of knew when it was when I came back, because of the moon, but I was all happy after seeing you last time. So for a few days after that when I thought about you I just got all happy and didn't realize oh shit it's his birthday. Til, uh. Yesterday."

Beat. Then, cheerfully: "So I made a pie!"

[Alex] She tells him why his birthday matters to her, and he's taking her hand, and she laughs awkwardly, but he's just -- looking at her. Surprising sincerity in that. The look in his eyes; the way he watches her and smiles a little, but doesn't quite laugh at her.

"Okay," he says simply.

And then they're talking about her time sense. And why it's screwy. And the spirit world. And she's saying she made the pie, and he says --

"Wait." He's genuinely surprised. "You made that? I thought you just bought it at the grocery store. I didn't know you could bake." He thinks for a minute. "Though you are an awesome cook."

[Sinclair] "I totally made that," she affirms, stepping forward to bump against him a little, nudging him wordlessly towards the kitchen archway. "I have quite a bit of Good Midwestern Wife training. It resurfaces occasionally. Baking is my go-to guilt coping mechanism."

So is, she doesn't say, killing things. Or singing. Baking, however: that's the funny one, the one she says aloud.

[Alex] "Hey."

He stops for a minute, turns to her, takes her shoulders in his hands. She's only a little shorter than him, but she's slimmer, narrower, sleeker. In this form, anyway. He doesn't have to bend very far to get eye to eye with her. He doesn't have to bend at all, actually, but he does lower his chin a little, raise his eyebrows, and find her eyes with his.

Which, frankly, is more than most kinfolk will ever be able to do.

"Stop feeling bad. Or guilty. Or anything like that. Okay? I really don't mind. I'm just happy you're here now. Really."

[Sinclair] The fact that he puts her hands on her shoulders like that would make her bristle, in a different mood. There's a flash of that, quick and gone, a hint that she might stiffen under other circumstances. Instead it makes her laugh a little. She shrugs, and shuffles out of her jacket under his hands, letting it drop to the floor. Then she's unzipping the last few inches of her hoodie, wiggling out of that and dropping it, too.

Sinclair puts her arms around his neck, the hem of her blue t-shirt with the Muppet on it tugging upwards slightly from her jeans. "I'm not," she says, firmly. Lighter: "I stopped feeling bad when you put your arms around me."

A grin. "That was really cheesy," Sinclair adds, and kisses him quickly on the mouth. It was supposed to be quick; actually, it stays for a moment, and she breathes deep before pulling back. "But I mean it."

[Alex] "No, it wasn't." Cheesy, that is. His eyes close; they kiss; it's longer than either anticipated or intended. When his eyes reopen, he adds, "Or if it was, I like it when you're cheesy. 'Cause you're not stupid-cheesy." And then he's grinning again, "And there's totally a difference."

[Sinclair] "Mm," she says agreeably, taking a step forward and pushing against him. Pushing him, even, a step backwards. Her arms are still around his neck. Her face is going to his throat again, nuzzling again, breathing in his scent as though memorizing it before tracking. Deep, chest-moving breaths; slow, warm exhales. "God, I really miss you when I'm not around you."

She kisses him again, putting her hand on his face, stroking her palm to his scalp, reaching for his hand and holding it against her hip or her waist, wherever it is. "I missed you really bad after the first time I came to Rio." Sinclair breathes again, forcibly slower. "Put your hands on my ass, baby. Okay?"

[Alex] Which does make him laugh -- quietly, pleasedly. "Mmm," he says, kissing her again, which serves as an answer. That, and the way his hands move from her hip to her ass, rubbing over her rear

before he draws back, inhaling.

"Hey," he says again, quiet as the last time and as inexplicably gentle, "let's go to bed. I want you in my bed."

[Sinclair] From the way Sinclair is pressed against him, so close that her belt buckle probably digs into his waist, so close that he can feel her breasts moving on his chest every time she breathes, so close that she can't. Stop. Kissing him, it seems like she's willing to -- and possibly planning on -- taking him there in the kitchen, pulling her pants and his boxers down and climbing onto his body and just taking him inside of her own, riding him up against the wall or the counters or the fridge.

Because she misses him, badly, when she's away from him. Because she can't masturbate nearly as often as she might want to because of her goddamn roommate. Because he's here and warm and god, she loves his fucking chest, she's running her hands all over it while he rubs her ass and kisses her next to the heating oven. Speaking of which:

Sinclair's on the verge of gasping, her brow wrinkled slightly in an aching, wanting expression. She kisses him again when he says what he does, closing her eyes again, mmming. The sound echoes her expression, doesn't quite touch manifesting the unexpected pressure in her chest. But: "Turn off the oven," is all she says, whispering, because she can be practical.

Sometimes.

[Alex] He's completely forgotten about the tiny little oven, which is more than big enough for one pie but would probably struggle with a large turkey. He's forgotten about it, and she can tell because when she reminds him he lets go of another laugh, a surprised little huff this time.

Then he breaks the kiss, twists aside, punches the button that makes the oven beep and the heating element click off, and then -- then he just picks her up, scoops her up and lifts her onto his stocky, barechested body, and she can feel his musculature tightening against her weight, his balance shifting to accommodate. He's not so large, or so strong, that he can lift her without a thought. He is, however, strong enough, and more to the point, both determined enough and wanting enough, that he can get it done.

"Okay," he says, kisses her again -- hard, "it's off. Let's go."

He can be practical too. He doesn't try to stagger into his bedroom holding her up all the way. He doesn't want to crash into a wall, or trip over his shoes, or -- any of the disasters that could potentially arise. He wants to get from point a to point b, and more to the point, he wants to get in bed with her and inside her. Soon. Asap. Now.

[Sinclair] The last time she was here they only lasted as long as it took for Alex to respond to Sinclair, for him to mention fucking like easter bunnies, thus giving her some kind of go-ahead he might not have realized she was waiting for. And she was waiting for him, waiting for permission -- however vague -- to do exactly as she did, swinging astride his lap and grinding against him until he convinced her to let their bodies separate long enough to get their damn clothes off.

They fucked on his couch, and napped on his couch, and got a pizza and showered while they waited for it and fucked again there, because there was no longer any need to go running in search of a condom before he could put her up against the tile and push inside of her. She'd promised to work him out, if he just stayed with her instead of going back to the gym. The people at the gym as regular and obsessive as Alex is had probably asked him what happened, why he didn't show back up, what the hell he was doing.

Whether he mentioned this or not, whether they wondered out loud or for more than half a second or just thanked their lucky stars he wasn't around, he was doing this:

eating pizza with his girlfriend-maybe-consort-whatever, and snuggling and play-fighting on the couch, and moving his hands over her bare hip and her tattooed hip, pulling her down onto his lap again, panting as she rode him,

later falling asleep in his bed with her arm draped over his waist, her leg draped over his legs, her body heavy and heated and imperturbable in sleep.

Sinclair's sex drive seems implacable sometimes. Midsentence she'll start touching him, or suddenly shudder with want and press her body against his, climbing on top of him while they're playing video games or rubbing against him while they're watching a movie, kissing any part of his body she can get her mouth on, touching any part of his body that feels good on her hands, which seems to be pretty much all of him. She never tried to seduce him. She never gave him those light, unnecessary touches of flirtation.

Once, she ran her hand over his abdomen and told him she liked it. Told him also she knew that wasn't the point. Never tried to cuddle with him in the narrow bed he had at the Brotherhood. Never pulled his unwilling hands to her breasts or her ass or the warm wetness between her legs and asked him if he was really, truly sure he didn't want to fuck her. Just once: once, before Rio, she admitted that she wanted him.

And he didn't want her back. So she backed off.

Even in Rio, she struggled with how voraciously she wanted to touch him and how wary she was that it would be too much, or that he was going to reject her regardless no matter what he said, or that he'd think her ...weird. Like when he reached past her in the shower to turn the water on warmer and she stepped closer to him, just to feel his flesh against hers, just to feel his naked body on hers for the first time. Like when he offered her his hand and she sniffed it, licked it, nuzzled her way up to his inner elbow. Like when her hand on his cock the first time was uncertain, and slow, and afraid.

And even now, Sinclair sometimes waits for him to make the first move. Or if not the first move, some signal that it's okay, that he wants her, that he's hardly opposed to having sex with her. It isn't for the same reasons -- not all of them -- as in Rio. And it isn't as consistently hesitant. But still. A lot of times she hangs back, she waits, she tries not to push if she gets so much as a vague hint that he might not feel like it.

Then there's times like this, when he picks her up against his body and she moans aloud, letting his arms hold her weight up while she pulls her shirt off, dropping it where the jackets fell before her hands are on his face again, tipping his head back so that when she kisses him she can just eat at his fucking mouth. She stops touching him only long enough to start wrenching her belt off, starting in on her jeans fasteners when he lets her down.

"Fuck," Sinclair breathes, and is kicking off her shoes in the hallway between kitchen and bedroom, belt dangling open, button but not zipper undone. "Fuck, baby, I want you inside me," she says, eager, enthusiastic, starting to push her jeans down.

[Alex] And that makes him laugh again. Which is three times in about a minute and a half, which is possibly more than he laughs in entire days when she's not around, unless you count the vicious, nasty laughs he lets loose sometimes when he's succeeded in battering someone into submission.

He's not the only obsessive gym rat at Tribull. There are actually a lot of them. Tribull's not your average 24-hour fitness, full of the new year's resolute and minivan dads wanting to lose a paunch. Tribull's a dedicated gym, centered around martial arts -- or more specifically, around all things MMA. The types that frequent Alex's gym are not unlike him, amateur prizefighters for whom maximum brutality matters more than the size of the pot.

Even amongst that sort, Alexander stands out. It's the cockiness. It's the viciousness. It's his lack of sportsmanship. He's a sore loser even in a friendly spar, tending to retaliate with unnecessary force. He's an infuriating winner, too, with a tendency to mock the fuck out of whoever he just put down. To salt the wound and rather literally add insult to injury. Simply put, if Alex doesn't have a lot of friends, there's a damn good reason for it.

None of which really matters right now. He's not really like that with her. Which isn't to say he's a different person with her, or that she makes him a better person, or ... any of that.

She's a monster. He's an asshole. That's not all they are, and that's not who they have to be

like this.

Like this, they're more like -- well. That's the question, really. There's no real term in Alex's mind for what they're like here. Just: different. And maybe: more like themselves.

Or maybe it's just: really fucking horny.

Because he laughs, to be sure. But while he's laughing, he's also whipping her zipper down, tugging her jeans down, dropping to a quick crouch to pull them all the way down to the floor and then -- just as quickly -- grabbing her by the legs and hoisting her over his shoulder, fireman-style, barbarian-style, making a playful little growl low in his throat as he bites the side of her thigh and tumbles her into bed and rises up on his knees there to help her tug her bra off, and then her panties. Off. Off off off. When she's bare, when she's naked, he all but dives on top of her, rolls her atop him, pushes his boxers off and kicks them to the floor.

"Woo-hoo," he says, all quiet-like, and grins like a goof. His curtains are closed, but the lights are on in the living room, as is the TV; it's dim but not totally dark in here.

[Sinclair] Right here Alex has a rectangular-ish arrangement of highly flammable, crushed living space. Right here he has a cramped, overstuffed pocket of utter freedom. Home is the one wild place, goes the quotation. It is the one place that is his. Disclaimers can be applied: he is Kin, and the Garou can always take what they want from the Kin. He has a landlord, and he has to pay rent or he loses what is his. But living space is living space; den is den. He can be himself here in a way unlike the Self he is in the ring, the Self he is at the Brotherhood or bonfires, the Self that exists outside the door.

Which are all pieces of him, and all have a home here, too, no matter how shallow a front they are. He is not an exceptional liar. Everything he is, asshole or douchebag, is in some way the truth just as much as

Hey

and his arm looped softly around her shoulders when she sleeps on his chest.

This is where he's welcomed her. Where he likes finding her things and putting them away next to his things. Where he put a second nightstand that she doesn't dare make note of out loud. There is no extra room here, but he's made space for her existence in it all the same. His one wild place. His one place where he can be ...different.

More like himself.

...and more, truth be told, than just really fucking horny.

They strip and tumble into bed, Sinclair yanking at his boxers while he's getting her bra off, her back arching as he pulls her panties down her long, toned legs and off her ankles. She starts to wrap herself around him when he dives on top of her, legs opening and a hard breath leaving her, but then he rolls onto his back and puts her on top and her breasts bounce from all the jostling and her body moves with it, her hips lifting and then re-settling as he finally

finally

gets a little bit still.

Sinclair doesn't answer his Woo hoo. She leans over him, her hair coming loose from its ponytail, and exhales a slow, soft, sighing kiss onto his mouth. It's the tenderest thing she's given him since the way she nuzzled him in goodbye the last time she was here. It goes on for awhile.

The fact that it is tender at all, and that this isn't shocking between them anymore, and that they both have it in them to be so gentle, to be so...

whatever this is,

may very well mean something.

Sinclair's hand slides down his chest, over his abdominals. She lifts her hips slightly and reaches between them, wrapping her hot and soft palm around his cock. Her lips part to gasp. She strokes him once, twice, rubs the head of him against her clit with torturous slowness, doesn't her face more than a few centimeters from his,

"I love knowing there's nothing between us," she whispers, like it's a confession. "This is how it should be."

So quiet, that voice, as she's guiding him inside her, sinking slowly down onto him. Her face is close for a moment; he can see the way her eyes flicker closed for half a second at the first push of his cock into her pussy. He can see the way her mouth opens, soundless at first and then revealing a whimpering gasp. And then she's burying her face in his neck, rolling her hips to take him in, moaning to his flesh, and he can't see anything but her shoulder, and the ceiling of his bedroom above them, and the insides of his own eyelids.

[Alex] Yes; he is still now. And quiet. And breathing in shallow, rapid breaths, quiet but excited, his eyes very dark in this light. She leans over him and his eyes close and he lifts his head a small distance from the blankets to kiss her, and those blankets under his head smell faintly of him, of his shower soaps and shampoo and all the things he cleans himself with several times a day because he takes care of his hygiene with a near-obsessiveness mirrored in the way he takes care of his body and strength.

Mm, he says into her mouth as her hand finds its way down his body, down over his chest and his beating heart, down past his flexing abdomen, down to wrap around him

which makes his mouth open, makes him gasp a small breath against her.

His head falls back, then. He lies back, eyes closed, neck bared, unafraid, transported by sensation, his hands going still on her body, his lips parted. He just breathes as she strokes him, rubs him over her, just breathes while she guides him in and

with such exquisite slowness

begins to sink down on him.

"Oh," he murmurs, and opens his eyes. She tells him something else she loves about him, or this. He touches her face gently with his hand, sweeps his palm back over her cheek over and over, and then catches her between his hands and brings her down to kiss him, full and deep, a second before her head bows past his and she moans into his shoulder.

He wraps his arms around her, then. He rolls again, is over her again, is dense and hot and warm above her, atop her, weighing between her legs and inside her. This time his kiss bears a renewed, tearing hunger. He moves against her, thrusting into her, panting against her mouth as he slides home again. He's quiet for once, Alex is, saying nothing, breathing, letting his breath speak for him.

[Sinclair] Something she loves about him. Or this. Or about this, with him. At this point it hardly matters, it's splitting hairs, and it's unnecessary: the fact that Sinclair is very fond of Alex is a known fact between them. She hopes.

She hopes he knows how happy it makes her to come here, how it's the one place on earth other than underwater or a frenzy where she doesn't feel locked into some kind of invisible but very physical cage. She hopes he can at very least intuit how different she is here than anywhere else, how different she is with him than with anyone else. She hopes he knows that her attachment to him isn't imprinting, that she cared about him and wanted to be near him before he took her virginity. And maybe he even knows that if all he'd ever wanted was friendship and if he'd said he could ignore knowing that she wanted to jump his bones then she would have accepted that, too

because she really does like him. And liked him before he ever said a kind word to her. Liked him before he helped her to her car and brought her the gourds she barely knew how to use at the time and liked him before she knew anyone else wanted him. Sinclair has, simply, always liked Alex. As a person. As he is.

Given her lack of experience, he can be assured there's no comparison going on between what she feels with him and what she's felt with someone else. That might not matter, except that there's a certain innocence about the way she said what she did as she worked herself down onto him. It isn't that he's just 'special' for being the only man to have ever come inside her, 'special' for being the only man to have had sex with her, period -- plainly, simply, and without consideration, she's happy just knowing that he's inside her, and there's no barrier, and it's him, and they're alone.

They kiss while they fuck. Always do, it seems. Kiss nearly nonstop, kiss helplessly, kiss gasps and groans into each other's mouths as though they can communicate something otherwise untouchable that way.

Sinclair's body writhes for a moment on top of his, her hips lifting and falling gently once, her face retaining the sensation of his sweeping palm like an afterburn, like the brillance left inside one's eyelids after glancing out into searing daylight. She shudders when he wraps her in his arms, moving closer -- if it's possible, and it might be -- and sensing the beginnings of motion in his musculature, rolls easily with him, wrapping her arms and legs around him to hold him

right where he is, right where he comes to be against her. Her back arches, chin lifting to kiss him, hands stroking up his back as he flexes his hips between her thighs. The snake on her leg twists against his waist, the palms and poetry on her ankle rubbing against his flank, the words on her hip meeting him every time he moves into her.

"Oh, god," is all Sinclair can say, though truthfully nothing need be said at all, and after that not much is. She lays her head back and her half-up hair is askew underneath her, her eyes closing as she abandons herself to sensation, panting quietly in the dim-dark of his bedroom. His bed. His shadowing body, his answering breaths.

[Alex] Why he helped Sinclair to her car and brought her the healing gourds she needed after Marrick tore her open still remains a bit of a mystery. Not only to her, but to him as well, and possibly more so because he never even thinks about it, or pauses to consider it, or tries to dissect it.

If asked, Alexander could say -- and rather readily -- why he clearly and verbally dissociated himself from Marrick when she said we gotta get a ride home that night, Sinclair's blood still wet on her mouth. It had nothing to do with any particular sense of loyalty to Sinclair, and everything to do with what he felt when Marrick said, as second before that, that's what it looks like when you don't hold back.

Which is to say: disgust. And worse: utter boredom.

He managed to hold that much back. Didn't show it, whether out of survival instinct or, more likely, out of his own half-defunct sense of boundaries and limits and wounds you don't stab at. That's why he's never cracked jokes about Marrick dying. That's why, when he thinks of the athletic, olive-skinned blonde who had an inexplicable crush on him dead and buried, he feels a vague sense of pity and unease, something akin to but not quite remorse.

No real regret, though. No regret at all for telling Marrick that night: Who's 'we'?

And, I sure as hell don't want to be your mate.

And, I'd say that to anyone.

What Alexander can't really say, though, is why that night, after watching Sinclair lose the only fight he's really seen her lose and watching Marrick win the only fight he's ever seen her win, he bothered to drag her to her car and help her with her talens. It wasn't out of obligation. It wasn't out of pity. It wasn't because he's her kin, and it certainly wasn't because he felt like she'd ended up like this fighting for him, somehow. He doesn't think about the why very much, but only because every time he does it's a little like nudging a loose tooth with your tongue -- a spike of soreness, a twinge of unfamiliar nerve-impulse that the brain can't even really interpret.

What he really can't explain is how he went from I don't wanna be your mate and I'd say that to anyone to I wouldn't mind.

It's unimportant, though. It doesn't matter right now. What matters right now is that they're on his bed, which is wider than his twinsized cot at the brotherhood but nowhere near as wide as, say, the expansive mattresses at the Loft. Or the huge lap of luxury at the Copacabana in Rio. If he stretched his arms out, even his unimpressive armspan would reach the edges of the mattress. When he moves into her

like that,

a little bit harder, they can feel the entire frame rock.

She can feel his breathing hitch, too. And his balance shift over her. She can feel him putting his weight a little higher, cantilevering himself from elbows and knees, catching her mouth again as they ramp it up a little. And then a little more. And then his mouth is leaving hers and he groans for the first time, low and quiet, a little raw; nips at her chin, bites a kiss to her mouth. His hands are sweeping into her hair now, pushing it awry, taking it down, and her leaned tattooed body is winding all around him.

[Sinclair] That isn't the only fight Sinclair's ever lost, but it's one of the few. She can count them on one hand.

They both know she wasn't fighting for him. She knows quite readily that she wasn't denying Marrick the right to challenge for Alex out of spite or her own 'feelings' for Alex, which were so vague and half-formed at the time they were easily pushed from her mind. She knows that she really did think the Fury was being pathetic, and the fact that she was a Fury made it even worse. She can explain that she pushed and prodded and insulted the Ahroun because at the time, that was sort of what she did, how she handled herself. She's gotten smarter. Wiser.

She's pretty sure that's the first time Alexander ever saw her naked, though. Covered in blood, guts hanging out, pale as starlight, pissed off and pride wounded. Kind of funny, when she thinks about it.

Sinclair knows, better than Marrick ever did, what it looks like when one doesn't hold back. She helped her Alpha bear Fons's body back to the Caern. She saw the pictures of Kenneth. Now even after her death, she has little respect for Marrick. There's no need to talk about it, though. And no need -- never was any need -- to talk to Alex about who he fucked and why and what he thought about them.

When she thinks about Alex and sex in the same breath, she's thinking about things like this: the way it feels when he's doing this to her, when he's on top of her and pressing into her and she's holding him tighter and sweat is starting to bead on their skins and all she can think of is oh god. oh fuck. oh my god, my fucking god.

Which is not at all the same as thinking that she's happy with him and likes him and wants to be around him more,

which is not at all the same as thinking I wouldn't mind. She doesn't, really. She can't picture herself as someone's mate. She can't picture herself in that context, period. She can't move from how she feels right now, holding his head where it is so she can kiss him harder, moaning, all the way down the track to this concept of Mine. Only. Til the day I die. Sinclair can't grasp it, which is why she retreated so fast and frantic from his mention of the very word.

But right now, she can grasp the way he makes her feel. When he's propped up on the couch next to her playing video games or slinging his arm around her as they curl up to watch a movie or wiggle past each other in the kitchen. Or the way he makes her feel when they're like this, and his fingers are stroking her hair up off her scalp, little blue hairtie getting lost in the wrinkles and folds of his bedspread.

"Faster," Sinclair murmurs, and there's a pleading edge to it, her legs tightening around him, her core flexing and writhing and her blue eyes opening to look up at him,

the only time they ever seem close to helpless. Lost. "Baby," she whispers, like recognition, like comfort, and leans up to kiss him again while he makes love to her.

[Alex] "Yeah," he answers, a breath of a word: that one, instead of okay or all right or anything else that would denote acquiescence instead of...

well. Agreement. As though faster were a mutual desire, which it is; as though baby was shorthand for what they were to each other, which it is, even if neither of them can even begin to put any other label on what they are to each other.

Not mates. Sinclair can't imagine it. Alexander, even if he said it, can't really either. That level of commitment, that level of absolute, doubtless devotion. No way. Not yet. They're both too young for that, in a sense. Immature might be a better word.

But still: there's this. Which does not require any sort of emotional maturity; which requires only the instinct to recognize:

yes. this is good.

And it is.

He pushes himself up on his hands, then. He's starting to pant as he moves into her, again and again, fucking her with his face taut and his brow faintly furrowed and the dim light from the living room beginning to gleam off his sides, his shoulders.

When he comes down off his hands after all, he all but collapses onto his elbows over her. Alex dips his head and catches her breast in his mouth, sucks at her with her nipple ring clinking the back of his teeth, and this time when he groans it's ragged and harsh, wanting, closer to some amorphous edge, some brink, some orgasm.

"Hold me," he says, low and muffled, leans up to kiss her mouth. "Closer."

[Sinclair] There's nothing particularly special or acrobatic or unexpected with the way they're fucking tonight. It's not the first time, it's not even the first time in a long time, it's not the first time since she got on birth control, it's not the first time in his bed, it's not the first time at the waxing or the waning gibbous moon, it's not even his birthday. They're in no spectacular position, they're not trying some novel new toy or trick, and overall there is simply nothing out of the ordinary going on here.

Except that the fact that they're together at all is out of the ordinary for both of them.

Sinclair's appetite for Alex is, notably, pretty voracious. Every time she fucks him it's like she's making up for lost time. Not just lost time with him, but lost time, period. However many years she's wanted to have sex and hasn't, for all the reasons she's told him. She wants, and she wants badly, and she wants it over. And over. And over. He's lucky if he can get within three feet of her some nights and not have her crawling all over him, panting for it, unabashedly hungry.

Every sincle instinct in her is, in fact, saying yes. this is good. Not just now; every time he's with her, every time he's putting his arms around her or telling her she should come around more often or indicating, with the way he hugs her and it lasts for a few extra seconds or the way he lights up when he sees her, that he missed her, too. Every instinct in her is crying out that something is different, and she doesn't know consciously what that is, but she doesn't need to in order for her bones and flesh to know

yes. this is good. this is very good.

So: faster. Alex holding himself up over her, going at her with a sort of renewed, intensified fervor, grasping the sheets and blankets beneath her while she grasps his very body. Her breasts move on her chest every time he pounds into her anew, and he can see her look down between them, her hands on his sides, her eyes on his cock, her lips parted to breathe and to let out little gasping cries the harder he fucks her. The faster they go, the louder the meeting of their lower halves gets.

"Yeah," she says, to see it. To feel it. "Oh fuck, yeah."

A moment later, or two, or ten, Alex is sinking down onto her again, mouth on her tits, moans in his throat, mumbling as he lets go of her nipple what he wants her to do, what is good, and she does, licking her sweat off his tongue even as her arms and legs snake tighter around him, as she fucks him back that much harder

if only to get him closer, to pull him deeper into her. "Don't stop, baby," she breathes, her hands running across his back and his hips, touching his arms. "Don't stop yet. Please don't stop."

[Alex] There's always been a sort of uninhibited joy underlying all of their fucking, their sex, their lovemaking. It's here again, rippling to the surface as she begs him not to stop, as he laughs in response. Breathlessly. Delightedly. Without a shred of the meanness, the viciousness, that she and everyone else who knows him has probably heard in his laughter more often than not.

"I'm not going to stop," he whispers. "I'm not going to stop, baby."

He slows, though. Just for a moment. He takes the time to kiss her again, this one long and deep, lingering, tasting.

When it ends he bites her lower lip gently, as though to convey something. Want, or assurance, or affection. Then he wraps his arms around her, under her, clasps her to his chest and presses his mouth to her neck and starts fucking her, rather unapologetically going from thrusting to pounding, to hammering at her until the thin mattress bounces and the headboard, cheap plywood thing that it is, is knocking against the wall.

Oh my god, she can hear him murmuring under his breath, over and over, oh my god, oh my god, so fucking god, oh my fucking god.

He's quiet this time, though. It's the confines, or the hour, or the nature of their lovemaking, or --

He's quiet this time. He doesn't holler, doesn't yell, doesn't wake the dead. Even at the end, his right hand peeling from her back to grasp fistfuls of his sheets, his mouth open to gasp against her neck, he's quiet -- nothing but his pulling breath, the furniture creaking, the low, wracked sounds he makes as he fucks into her harder, recklessly, nailing her down into the mattress for the last three, four, five strokes before he gasps

"I'm gonna come -- "

like some sort of promise or prophecy or plea. He doesn't let go of her. Or of the bed, as though that alone kept him anchored to the earth. He holds on, pounds himself deep, holds himself there -- goes intensely silent for a second or two before he's panting harshly past her ear, heavy over her now, a muscle in his side shivering from strain and release, both.

[Sinclair] She can think of only one time it's been even a little like this. Waking up in the middle of the night in Rio, the windows open and the night air sweet and sea-salty. Waking up to find herself in the most luxurious bed she's ever slept in, which made her wonder how she woke up at all, until she blearily opened her eyes a little and saw Alex lying there with her. They were close enough to share a pillow, though they didn't. Their legs and warms were braided together under the covers, their bodies bound by points of heat, the moisture of sweat, sheer nearness.

And she'd wanted so fucking suddenly to be closer to him that she did the only thing she could think of to do, and moved her arms and legs to pull him against her, nuzzling and kissing him softly awake, whispering More in his ear,

which he answered by rolling her almost carefully underneath him and reaching for a condom on the nightstand, fucking her for the fourth or fifth time slow

and quiet.

Quiet, which is rare with them, because she's a fucking cheerleader-singer-Galliard and he's... well. Him. Quiet, rare because they're usually swearing and yelling and laughing and moaning aloud and usually they're not just moving together and moaning softly like this, panting out a few spare words and nothing else. But the last time it was anything like this, she clutched at him when she came and said Alex Alex Alex oh-so-quiet, and he shuddered when his own orgasm hit him, burying himself to the hilt in her cunt and feeling those sinfully decadent sheets sliding dry and cool against his ass, his lower back, the sides of their joined hips.

Not the same, this. They aren't asleep, aren't anywhere close to sleepy, it's a different bed, the windows are closed, and so on, and so on, and yet she's gasping under him just like that, clutching at his arms and his shoulderblades while he holds her

tightly. While he kisses her throat and feels her pulse jumping under his lips, while the headboard bangs on the wall and while she runs her hand down his arm to hold his hand, to lace their fingers and put their palms together,

here. hold me. hold me instead of the sheets.

Alex promises his orgasm, begs for it, something, and throws himself into the last several thrusts of fucking her, hearing her moan on every stroke, and then feeling only his body and mind collapsing like a star, the whole world falling to brilliant pieces around him, til he's left washed up upon her, parts of him shaking. All of him held close. Sinclair's legs are wrapped around him, one arm holding him to her chest, her other hand linked to his, her lips parted and breath panting along his temple.

Different sort of panting. Not the trembling, overcome breaths she gasps out after orgasm, not the little whimpers she makes when they rock together right after and she's so fucking sensitive she thinks she's going to die. It takes several seconds, maybe, but Alex knows her body well enough by now, knows the way it is with her well enough, to know that Sinclair hasn't come with him. Yet at the same time, she seems like she's coming down with him, all the same, gently nuzzling his cheek and pressing a soft kiss or two to his face, letting loose a low, satisfied hum.

[Alex] For a while, Alexander is rather convinced that he can't even move. That all his nerves have disconnected from one another, leaving him amorphous and incoherent, undone.

Then he discovers he can move after all. He's moving: his chest rising and falling as he breathes. His heart still pounding in his chest.

His head, then, turning until he can kiss Sinclair's neck. And shoulder. And neck again. He sighs. His arms: pushing himself up on his elbows, his head heavy, his eyes closed, temple sliding past hers, brow pressing to hers. He kisses her softly. For a while, that seems to be all there is between them -- a strange sort of satiation, a sense of coming down from some dazzling height.

It takes a strange sort of trust to be able to recognize that he came this time and she did not. To not feel threatened somehow by this, nor feel any urgent need to bring her to the same pleasure in order to feel qualified as a lover, or a man, or ... anything. It takes a strange, paradoxical sort of confidence to know it, accept it, and not feel lessened somehow. With anyone else, he might not have that confidence. He probably wouldn't. He'd probably feel driven to get it up again as soon as possible, to fuck his partner until she came, too, or faked it convincingly enough that he couldn't tell, and then he could lie back, secure again in the knowledge that hah, another one bit the dust.

Or something like that.

Those thoughts are loose and unmoored in his mind. Might as well be from a distant galaxy, radio signals, x-ray astronomy. In college, he got up at 2am sometimes to go look at stars. Intro to Astro. He thinks that even now, if he woke Sinclair up at 2am -- provided he manages to wake her up -- she'd go look at the stars with him. He thinks: this is good.

When he finally moves, when he kisses her mouth and his eyes half-lid but don't quite close; when he reaches down to where they're still joined, where his cock is still inside her, and begins to stroke her

gently, so very gently,

it's not obligation that makes him do it. It's not a sense of needing to do this to prove himself enough of a man, in control of the situation, that makes him slide his fingers over her flesh, that makes him touch her, that makes him shift over her and inside her until there's room enough for him to find her clit

and begin to play with her. And rub her. And fondle her.

Nothing of the sort. Something closer to desire, though of a different, lazier sort. A want, then. To see her like this. To make her feel good, or simply: feel this. To feel her pussy pulse and contract around him while he's still inside her, still coming down from his rush.

This kiss is slow, and lazy, and long. He doesn't say anything, but there's a renewed focus in the way he touches her now, and in the way he nibbles at her mouth with his lips, eats at her with his kiss.

[Sinclair] Kissing. His head heavy, his lips aimless, his kisses warm and sighing. Sinclair's eyes drift closed as Alex shifts over her, nuzzling his way to her mouth. They kiss, slow and soft and heavy and heated. She rubs her thumb over the side of his index finger, breathing a sound much like the one she made in the wake of his orgasm: content.

A different kind of contentment, to be sure. But in a way, deeper even than what she finds when she comes so hard that she cries out, bucking her hips and clawing her fingernails down his back. Deeper in how conscious she is of it, how okay she is with it, how inexplicably and indescribably happy she is to be holding him right now. It's not the ecstatic glee that sends her jumping into his arms sometimes. It's an almost sacred feeling, silent and transcendant, yet held safe and perfect inside of her.

Like looking at the stars.

He reaches down and at first, Sinclair lets him. She closes her eyes and exhales shakily, tipping her head back as his fingertips find her clit and start to pet her flesh with infinite care, delicate slowness. She gives a tremble, under him and around him, which is sign enough that yes. It feels good. It makes her clench around him, involuntary, which makes her gasp, a hard and shaking pant. Sinclair makes some noise against his mouth when he kisses her, but just as he's starting to bring her up again she whispers, almost begging at first:

"Don't. Baby, don't."

But the plea isn't fearful, or resentful. It isn't worried, or nervous. If anything, her voice is gentle when she opens her eyes and touches his face and touches his arm as though to still his hand. Sinclair finds his eyes with her own, pretty multicolored warmth to that ethereal sky blue, and her hand finds his hand between her legs, between their bodies. All she does is touch his hand, not to wrench him away nor forcibly stop him. But just: her hand on his.

"I just want to be here with you," she whispers, without any trace of reassurance, or forgiveness. Because there is nothing to assure him of, and nothing to forgive. "Maybe later," Sinclair adds, the backs of her knuckles sweeping gently on his cheekbone. "Right now I just want to hold you. And be still."

The first hint of uncertainty, as though she's not sure if it's: "Okay?"

[Alex] That singular, pulsing clench of her body around him makes him gasp -- overcome, too much. And then he's kissing her again, and she's making that little noise, and he's just starting to bring her up again when he whispers, "I want to feel you come."

Which is the raw, pure, unalloyed truth.

Which means it means something, maybe, when she whispers don't and he ... doesn't. He stops. His fingers stop stroking, stop caressing, lay gentle and mild against her sensitive flesh. He kisses her, slow and soft, and when his eyes open again her hand has found his, rests between their bodies, between her thighs.

He shifts gently, presses into her a little, sighs across her mouth. Nuzzles her face. Then he lies down again, putting his weight a little to the side so as not to lay on her, and smiles.

"Okay."

The truth is, it's more likely that he'll fall asleep first. That they will. It's past his bedtime, and he's got an internal clock more precise than time.gov. Than cesium clocks. And the pie in the oven will probably sit there til morning, and they'll have the oh-so-nutritious and healthy breakfast of pie and ice cream sometime around 9, 10am, or later than that if they fuck again first, energetically this time, lit by the morning sun and whatever energy he works up running at the crack of dawn.

The truth is, it doesn't matter. He's perfectly happy to be held. And hold. And be still. And sleep.

But not quite yet. His eyes open again. He stirs, his hand sliding out from under hers to spread over her waist instead. His eyes follow his fingers: opening across her ribs; cupping her breast.

"Do you wanna move in with me?" He asks this quietly, unhurriedly, with a frank honesty that somehow never traverses into uncertainty or embarrassment. "I don't mean ditch your pack completely and only ever crash here, but ... move in with me, anyway?"

Somehow, the second time sounds like less of a question; more of a request.

[Sinclair] Okay.

Even though the way he was touching her made Sinclair stir again, even though she started to squirm, even though if she'd let him keep going he would have gotten what he wanted and felt her ride into a high, hard orgasm in his bed. Even though he wants to feel her come, it's

okay.

Sinclair exhales slowly, some deep breath she can't remember taking, and closes her eyes for a few seconds while Alex moves his hand from her. She lazes in his bed, working around him until they're both comfortable, entangled and conjoined still, but laying close and warm together. She breathes, coming down a little more, and after a little while, she opens her eyes. She's nowhere near sleepy, truth be told. She could sleep. She can almost always sleep if she just closes her eyes and lays still for a bit. But she's not ready. Not quite.

Ready to lie comfortably and close with her boyfriend, yes. Ready to be still and hold him and be happy that they made love, or had sex, or fucked, and that he came inside her, hot and wet and losing his fucking mind between her legs. She strokes his back gently with her hand, humming softly again, smiling gently, opening her eyes to look at him as he moves his touch to her breast, the heel of his hand resting above her heart.

If he were holding her hip or laying his hand on her belly or wrapping his palm around her arm, Alex would miss exactly what it does to her when he speaks. The steadily slowing beat of her heart slams suddenly, quickens under his hand. Her chest lifts and falls with a sudden, deep, but too-fast breath that she has to concentrate to exhale.

And she seems to be trying to answer, but nothing's coming out.

Well, one thing:

A breath. And: "Um."

Which is to say: I'm overwhelmed.

[Alex] It's like an echo. A moment ago, the way he touched her made her cunt squeeze around him. Now, what he says makes her heart jump in the same way; makes her take a breath; makes her let it out deliberately, with concentration.

He shifts, raising himself up on his free elbow, leaning down to lick at her nipple gently, delicately, just over the arch of thumb and forefinger. After a moment he closes his mouth over her and sucks, and that too is gentle, delicate, slow.

A moment later he lies back down. They breathe together for a while.

"You don't have to decide right now," he adds, and smiles. "It's a standing offer."

[Sinclair] Sinclair exhales again, heavily, her eyes falling closed. She arches just a bit when he closes his mouth around her breast, an aching moan hitching in her throat and not quite making it out enough to create a pure sound. "Baby," she says, this time not in recognition but in open plea, as though he's adding mindblown to overwhelmed, adding wracked to overcome. She can't keep coping with this treatment.

Alex pulls back and lies back down, and Sinclair pants again. Again: she convulses around his cock, slow rippling pulses of pleasure she can neither control nor repress. It takes effort to open her eyes. She's gasping for air, and licks her lips, staring at the ceiling. Her eyes track back and forth across it a little.

"I think..." she whispers, "I want to talk about this. But you keep ..." she doesn't finish telling him what he keeps. She closes her eyes, and breathes more deeply. Opens them. "Can you fuck me again?"

Sinclair turns her head, twisting to look at him, her brow a little bit furrowed. It's a genuine question: can he, so soon after. The look in her eyes is ragged as desperation, almost frenetic. "Fuck, Alex..."

A whisper, that.

[Alex] The corner of his mouth pulls, a flicker of a smile that doesn't quite coalesce. A moment later his eyes darken, or seem to: but really, it's just his lids drooping as he leans into her, kisses her, rolls her carefully on top.

So soon after. So soon that he's still inside her. That he hasn't even pulled out yet. That he's still softening inside her, and that the pulses of her cunt keep making his eyes flicker shut, or his breath hitch, or...

He rolls her atop anyway. And his hands find her hips, smooth over her skin. He urges her, gently, to move on him. "Go slow," he whispers. "Take it slow for a while. Don't stop kissing me."

[Sinclair] There's need in her now, where before it was pure and uncomplicated desire. Now Alex can feel need in her kisses, aching and confused. Slow, he whispers, and by god, she tries. She gets on top of him but she stays close, leaning over him so that her breasts touch his chest, so that their arms entwine them, so that she can kiss him more deeply, trying to go slow.

And yet: needing to make love to him again, though neither of them is using words like that. Every time she touches him he can feel it: Sinclair's adrift, somehow, mortally confused, not even sure what she feels right now, much less why. All she can do is move closer to him, rock with him inside her, kiss him as though he's oxygen. Or healing.

"Alex," she says, imploring, rolling her hips to move him inside of her, whimpering his name in his ear. She shudders. She presses herself into him, closing her eyes tightly. "Hold me. Please hold onto me."

As though she'll float away, or come apart, if he doesn't.

[Alex] So he does: putting his hands on her face, holding her face between his hands. He can feel the hinge of her jaw move beneath his palm as she kisses him, the delicate mobile articulation of bone. There's a deceptive slenderness, slightness to her. Sometimes when she's asleep, she looks innocent; she looks young; she looks like just a girl

when he knows, very well, that she's a predator, and a monster, and sometimes so voraciously hungry for his flesh that it takes all the courage he has to withstand it. To face it. To answer it.

And then sometimes it's like this. Sometimes she clings to him like she needs him, or needs what's between them. Grasps at him with her hot hand, kisses him with her hot mouth, and both of them have their eyes closed now, and he's gasping into her mouth as she moves on him, rides him past hypersensitivity back into the realm of arousal, and pleasure.

"That's it," he's whispering. His hands hold her hips lightly now, riding the rise and fall of her body as she rides his cock. "Oh, that's it, baby. Don't stop."

[Sinclair] So much for don't, for being still, for just holding each other in bed awhile.

Past the splay of his fingers on her face, Alex can see the way her mouth opens as she gasps, the way her eyes flutter closed, the way her brow furrows as though with concentration. He's seen her asleep so many times he knows the way the tension melts out of her, the way she retreats into a sort of deathly unconsciousness that is not so much a restoration as an escape. He knows that she looks tender. He doesn't know she never smiles when woken the way she does when he comes back in the mornings and she's still in his bed, rumpled up with the sheets and blankets, tousled and relaxed and openly happy to see him.

Hard to say if she sleeps better here, or if she has nicer dreams. She doesn't ever remember them. She does remember, however, the sex they have in his bed, or on his couch, in this tiny apartment. She remembers the way she feels when she wakes up to him, or wakes up while he's at the gym and smells traces of him in bed with her. And it's good. It's very, very good.

Her hands are on his chest now, open and yet not moving, not caressing and sliding all over him. She feels his heartbeat under her palm. She feels him alive and hot and wanting, now, wanting her again, and there's no way she would stop now but she doesn't say it. She can't say anything. So she kisses him, whimpering softly, making the bedsprings creak with every slow, hard roll of their bodies together, setting a steady and ramping upwards rhythm.

Sinclair puts one of his hands on her breast. Holds it there. "Baby," she says, not meaninglessly but thoughtlessly, "oh...oh my sweet baby, that hard fucking cock..."

A little faster, now. Bouncing slightly. The headboard taps against the wall, and the neighbors think Again? and Sinclair just whimpers, just holds herself up on top of him and rides him, letting her body talk to his body when her soul doesn't understand a word.

[Alex] So much for don't. So much for being still. So much for sleeping at ten, and wrapping each other up warm and close, and drifting off into whatever dream or dreamless sleep they might find tonight. Here. In his tiny, cramped little den where everything, every inch and centimeter, is marked somehow by his presence and his scent.

None of that, now. Right now, they've got other concerns. Right now, she's riding him, and the bedsprings are starting to groan again, and Alexander arches his head back, closes his eyes, holds his lover by the hips until she moves his hand to her breast, and then he cups her breasts and feels their weight and softness in his hands as she rocks on him, rides on him, bounces on him.

It's still quiet. He doesn't say much -- oh now and then, baby, as though he were asking something of her; yeah, that's it when she moves a certain way, or does something that makes the broader muscles of his torso clench and roll.

And still: slow. Ramping up slowly. Unfolding from the first, careful movements to something a little more, until his heart is hammering fast and hard under her palm, until his lips are parted and the muscles of his face pull and flicker with pleasure; until he's panting for breath as she rides him, rides him, rides him.

Eventually, his eyes open again. Eventually he rises up on his elbow, wrapping his hand around the back of her neck, bringing her down to eat at her mouth while she moves on him. Eventually there's a blind hunger to the way he kisses her, a seeking, nuzzling wanting in the way his mouth moves over her face, onto hers, past hers, to her neck.

"Faster," he whispers then. "Ride me hard, baby. Oh. Make me come inside you again."

[Sinclair] Tonight, Alex isn't going to sleep at ten p.m. on the dot. Truthfully, Sinclair hadn't intended on letting him drift off to sleep after their last round, either, but she already admitted her time sense is a little off these days. She never stopped wanting him. Her arousal was tight and hard and hot when he came, when his groans and gasps where quiet for once and he buried his face in her skin and spent himself inside of her the first time. When he touched her afterward, too, she squirmed gently and begged him to stop the way she might if he were to do something like that after her own orgasm, too soon to bear.

Sinclair is touching herself now, her left hand on his chest and her right hand stroking her pussy while she slides it up and down his cock, faster now, rocking hard and quick and forceful enough to start the tapping of the headboard to all-out banging on the wall. He knows she's close when she starts to writhe. He knows she's going to come when she starts to grind down on him, swiveling her hips in a long circle, moaning aloud. She kisses him, or lets him kiss her, and then plants her hands on his chest and all but pushes him down onto the bed again, using his fucking body at the end, head thrown back and a strangled, wracked cry leaving her throat.

Sinclair isn't even swearing, then, bucking her hips on the last few... the last six, seven strokes, riding herself into a ragged, almost too controlled orgasm that

suddenly

falls apart, when she lets go. Sinclair is holding on, and holding on tightly, and she's almost rough with him because of it, until some trigger flips in her mind or body and she can't hold on anymore. She all but collapses onto him then, letting out a scream. Pleasure twisting inside of her turns into open bursts of it, liquid and riotous and she's scared for a moment she's going to lose something, she's going to have a heart attack or die or something, and all she can do is fold over him and hold onto him and scream.

[Alex] They've done this often enough now that he's starting to recognize the signs. He knows what it means when she moans like that. He knows what it means when she grinds on him like that, working her hips in a hard swivel that makes him throw his head back and groan aloud. He knows what it means when she kisses him like that, and he's not surprised, really, when she abruptly shoves him down, all but pins him to the bed, which would make him laugh out of some reckless delight if it didn't make him gasp out of reckless enjoyment

because she's fucking him now, using his cock like his sole purpose here was to get her off, and he doesn't mind. He doesn't mind at all. He watches her, brow furrowed, teeth on edge, holding her by the hips and lifting his head to watch that pussy pound onto his cock, over and over until, until,

until she comes on him, just like that.

And she's not quiet. She's a goddamn cheerleader, and a galliard, and a singer, and generally as much of a loudmouth as he is. She screams and in that same instant he throws his head back and grabs her hips and pulls her down on him, against him, seals her body to his and thrusts up against that downforce.

"Fuck!" It's too raw, too tattered, to be a scream. It's somewhere between a gasp and a shout, underscoring the wild sound she lets go of. A second, two, three -- then, "Fuck," again, and he's lifting her hips a short distance, lifting his own lower body from the bed, planting his feet, slamming up into her in three short, fierce strokes. The last one leaves him rigid, quivering, coming into her; his breath stopping in his chest for an instant before he's panting again, unsteadily, heaving air out of the room and into his lungs, into his burning blood.

He pulls her with him when he lowers himself back to the mattress. Keeps her on him, her cunt planted firm on his cock. "Fuck," he says again, and again, as though that's the only word left to him, "oh, my god, fuck."

[Sinclair] And now she's kissing him, when she can't even breathe properly and they've jostled and fucked each other to quite literal soreness, when she's still panting and groaning from her orgasm, rocking her hips to ride the very very last of it out on top of him. She's moving her hands to his face, not gentle now either, kissing him and moaning as she does so, crawling all over him, sweaty and

wild.

Yet she's holding him, her arms braced on either side of him, her body covering his, staying close. Staying close now as though she must, as though it's a necessity for survival, to stay close to him after sex. Even in spring, in the city, when the cold isn't really a threat to them. Or him. Even though he can wrap his hands around her wrists just as if she were a real girl and as delicate as one. Because Sinclair is slender.

But Sinclair could also twist her hand on his wrist and snap his arm in half, if she wanted to. Which she never has. Never, for a moment, has she wanted to hurt him. Which might be part of why it's okay that she slammed him down and fucked him like that at the very end, rode him like a goddamn pony or her own toy, because she's never wanted to do him true harm,

which he seems to believe in, now.

Sinclair starts to settle down again after several long, protracted seconds, gasping and sighing and slowing her kisses finally. She presses her lips to his, and to his face, and then his neck and his shoulder and shivers. She isn't cold. She's hot to the touch, sticky with sweat, taking deep, heaving breaths atop him.

"Fuck," she echoes, the very last trace of the word crumbling and pale from her voice.

She holds him. Tightly, now, tighter even than before, brow to his shoulder, while her breathing slows. While her chest gentles with every in- and exhale against his. While she remembers who and where she is, and what her name is, and how to breathe. When she finally turns her face, laying her cheek down on him, she breathes out every last breath of air in her lungs in one long sigh. She listens to his heartbeat.

"Don't you dare go to sleep yet," she whispers.

[Alex] Afterward, he's nearly motionless -- his hands tracing slow arcs up and down her back, his body moving as he breathes. Other than that, nothing. He just lies there, stretched out, laid out, drowsing, lazy.

Sated.

When she speaks, Alexander's chest moves under Sinclair's cheek as he laughs. Truth be told, he was pretty close to doing just that. Sleeping. Before his heart's even settled back down. Before he's even breathing steadily. Before his sweat has even begun to cool. He opens his eyes now, though, looks at the dim ceiling, thinks of the TV on in the living room, the Xbox paused; doesn't really care.

"You want to go again?" Something between incredulity and amusement, there.

[Sinclair] Sinclair laughs, breathily, at that. "No," she assures him, and holds him tighter for a moment, a slow and gentle squeeze that relents almost instantly because her arms are somewhat limp. She pauses. She considers.

"I'd want to," she whispers, without expectation, "maybe after a shower and some pie. I'd want to do it again. But not right now." She breathes, making soft noises as she does so, quite happy to be right where she is, with her boyfriend softening inside of her for the second time... though can it be called the 'second'? He never slid out of her. He never left her.

"I just ...want to talk for a few minutes. And maybe shower before we get under the covers, and stuff."

[Alex] One of his hands moves, lifting off her back. It drifts through space. He's slow. His mind is slow with pleasure. His hand feels disconnected from him, as though he'd literally fallen to pieces and was just now beginning to come back together.

His hand resettles on the back of her head, stroking her hair off her neck, to the side. "About what I asked earlier?" he murmurs. "You moving in and all?"

[Sinclair] Earlier wasn't so long ago. Minutes, maybe. She wasn't far from orgasm, however stalled it had become, and it didn't take long for Alex's overcome sensitivity to what she was doing to him to become rapidly rising lust. But in those minutes, something seems to have changed. Not about them, really. Not even a change in Sinclair, or a change in Alex. Maybe the world's just turned a bit further, and is therefore different than it was when he put his hand on her breast and told her,

asked her,

to move in with him.

She drowses for a moment when he puts his hand on her head, sighing with something like contentment at the feel of it. It's comforting, and she allows herself to be comforted, nodding against his chest. "Yeah." She talks low. Talks slow, because there's no rush. Not that she feels, at least. "I know you don't want to dissect everything," she goes on, murmuring the words, "but that's not like... me wondering what you think about me or asking you how you feel after sex or something."

Pushing herself up slowly on her elbows, Sinclair lifts her head and looks down at him, hair hanging mostly on one side of her face thanks to his sweeping of it off her neck. There isn't much light behind her to the side of her, but what there is comes filtered through that long, straight hair, or through the blinded window. All of her is either reddish-gold and lurid from the Xbox, the kitchen light... or pale blue and silver and cut with shadow coming from the window. She's shifted, holding herself up on one arm beside his head, the other hand stroking his chest idly. Familiarly.

"It's fast," she whispers, almost apologetically, "and even if I can see that, I don't... really care. But at the same time it makes it feel more real." A beat, then, and a tightening of her brow that echoes the uncertain, sorry tone she has. "So that kind of scares me. And I don't mean that this isn't already real to me or whatever."

Her eyes are downcast, looking at her hand where it rests on his chest. "It's very real to me," she goes on, her whisper quieting even further.

Sinclair licks her lips and looks at him again, shifting a bit on him to get more comfortable. He's still inside her, and the motion makes her breathe in a bit. "I like that this place is Your Place, y'know? I like it that it's yours, but you let me be here. It means a lot to me, leaving stuff here. Jesus... it even meant a lot to me when you got the other nightstand." She laughs at herself, there, a quiet huff of amusement. And happiness. Sinclair ducks her head again and touches her face to his chest, rubbing gently for a second.

"So I guess I just want to understand what you're willing to let it be My Place, too. Especially when you know I'm just going to get all territorial and scare the neighbors."

[Alex] So they shift on and around each other, gently, moving apart just enough to see each other more easily and to coexist more comfortably in the same smallish space. She lifts herself on one arm. He tucks one hand behind his head. Her free hand strokes his chest, and his strokes her hair.

When she ducks her head to his chest, he lifts his. He settles back. Shadows from the parking lot sway across his ceiling: a tree, budding with spring. Branches, leaves.

"I guess I haven't really given it much thought," he admits. "I'm just happy every time you show up here. And I'm happy when I see little reminders of you around my place. So I thought it'd be cool if you were here more often. Like if you could come here at will and spend the night whenever you had the chance, and all."

He pauses for a moment.

"I thought it'd be nice," he adds: a truer word than cool. "But it is fast. And ... more real. And to tell you the truth, now that I'm stopping to think about it, it makes me a little wary."

He shifts, his head moving on the cradle of his hand. "So I don't really want to think too much about it," he adds. "And weigh pros and cons and rationalize and all that." A faint, ironic laugh. "If I'd thought too much about it, I probably wouldn't have even invited you up in Rio. And I don't regret that."

[Sinclair] She's quiet for awhile after that. He can see her face, but after he starts to speak he can't see her eyes. She's looking at his chest again, so what he sees when he looks at Sinclair is shadows and eyelashes. He feels her warm against him, half to his chest, half to his side. Engulfing him, still, holding him inside her even as they're talking about this.

"Okay," she says finally, softly, and moves her arms, laying back down. This time mostly on her side, her leg over him, holding him in her even now. She puts her head on his arm, on his shoulder, looking towards the window.

[Alex] "Hey," quietly, "look at me."

[Sinclair] To that, Sinclair closes her eyes tightly. She makes no sound of protest, no struggle of resistance, but he can feel the tension of that initial moment where his arm circles her, where her body rests so very, very close to his.

She pushes herself up to her elbow, though, and looks at him. Her brow is furrowed. There's something in her eyes that makes them gleam.

[Alex] "I still want you to move in," he says, then. "If I think about it it's scary. Because you're a werewolf and this is my home and I'm inviting the proverbial wolf at the door in. I'm telling you: this is your home too. You can come here whenever you want. You can claim it, own it, treat it like it's yours. And ... in a way, that means you can treat me like I'm yours, too. And that's scary.

"But I want you to move in. I want to offer all that. If I didn't, I wouldn't have said anything. I do a lot of stuff out of impulse but I don't ever regret it, later. It's just ... scary and overwhelming to think about."

[Sinclair] The moon's waxing. It will be her phase in a matter of days, and everyone near Sinclair will find her that much more threatening. That much more beautiful. That much stronger, that much more... everything she is.

It will be nearly impossible to imagine her as she is now. Not the tousled or the sweaty or the sated, but the expression on her face, the evident moisture in her eyes. She sniffs, and nothing falls, but she keeps her eyes open as though to dry them and looks at the window again, turning her head away from him for the second time.

With any number of other women her age it would be a manipulative tactic. A push to make him ask her what's wrong, to show her he cares, to force him to some kind of desired action. With Sinclair, she just can't look at him until she has herself under control again. So she looks at the window, and then she breathes, and

finally comes back to him, leaning down to kiss his chest.

"I'm not ready," she whispers, barely audible. Confesses. To herself, too.

Her lips lift from his skin again, and her hair brushes over his skin as she pulls away, running her hand up his side. "Do you wanna shower with me?"

[Alex] [i reed j00!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 3, 6, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Alex] [i reed j00 MOAR.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 7)

[Sinclair] [She means what she said: she's really not ready for what he's offering. She's kind of sad, and a little scared. It almost seems like she feels a bit lonely/hurt. Hard to tell if it's one or the other or both.]
to Alex

[Alex] He doesn't let her lean down for a second. He holds her there where he can see her, see her eyes, read her. And he does: his own eyes flicking between hers, over her face, gleaning what he can in the dimness, in his -- let's admit it -- inexperience with all this.

Then he draws a quiet breath; something like a sigh. Lets it out, and leans up on one elbow, and kisses the center of her forehead gently.

"Yeah. Let's go."

[Sinclair] [I can do it, too!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 7, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Alex] [he's a little unsure -- he thinks maybe he said the wrong thing and hurt her. he's also a little disappointed that she said no! but mostly, he's worried he hurt her.]
to Sinclair

[Sinclair] For once, they see each other more clearly than either once seems inclined to mention. They don't jump to conclusions. They look closely, they kiss each other -- over the heart, over the eyes -- and he can tell:

she's hurt. Or sad. Something.

And she can tell: he's worried that he hurt her.

But Sinclair doesn't fall all over herself to tell him it's okay, or to soothe him. She watches him sigh the way he does, and this time when she kisses him it's his mouth. Softly. As tenderly as she can, which is... more tender than anyone who knows her would imagine. She deepens it after a moment, and when it stops, when she lets it end, she rests her face close to his, cheek to cheek and body to body.

"I'm falling for you," she whispers, her lips close to his ear but her eyes closed. "And it scares me when you don't want to think about this, or just... do whatever. It seems careless. And I'm scared that you're going to be careless with me, and it's going to hurt, because... I'm falling for you."

She pulls back. Up, enough to look down at him, to see his face and his eyes. To let him see hers.

[Alex] Sinclair can feel him stiffen when she says it: I'm falling for you. She can almost sense the thoughts that bolt through him like lightning -- a jumble of surprise, denial, uncertainty, all of which adds up to no no no no no no.

And then it subsides. He shifts; he puts his hand on her back, and he holds her where she is. Close. Even when she draws back enough that they can see each others' eyes, that remains the truth: they're close. They're near.

"I'm not being careless," he says. It's quiet, but absolute -- not a shred of doubt or deceit here. "I'm not going to be careless with you. I just don't want to be too careful.

"Baby, you have to understand, I've never wanted to be loved or wanted or claimed by a werewolf. I've never wanted to love a werewolf. It's not even indifference. It's active avoidance. In fact, if you asked me to make a rational decision right here and now, even after everything -- the truth is I still don't want to love or want a werewolf.

"It's too dangerous. It's not even that someone's gonna get hurt. It's that in the end, someone's going to die. It takes a certain sort of kin to aspire to something like that, and I'm not that kind of kin. I'll never be that kind of kin.

"So if you make me think about it, and talk about it, and step through it one logical move at a time ... I won't let myself get anywhere with you. And I don't want to do that. I want to be here with you. I like spending time with you, and wanting you, and -- I don't want to put a label on that that'll make me run away from it. As long as I don't think about it so much that I have to label it, then I don't have to risk deciding I need to get out before one of us gets hurt. Or killed.

"I don't want to be so careful, I don't do what I want to do. Do you understand?"

[Sinclair] And that hurts, too. If anything, the faint physical recoiling in Sinclair when Alex stiffens tells him it wasn't loneliness that he sensed earlier. Which may very well freak him out even more: that he can hurt her, and so very easily, she who should be as untouchable here as she is in battle. And all it takes is a misunderstood word, or a slip of the tongue, or how she feels and how he feels not matching up. All it takes is the intimation that she can't be as open as she might want, as open as she hopes and sometimes fools herself into being, because

he might bolt.

Which is, to be fair, not exactly what he's saying. But she knows herself better than she used to. She knows now why she clamped down so hard on the part of her that wants always and deeply to care, to reach out, to ... help. Comfort. Nurture. She understands why she took so quickly to the part of her that wants mostly to kill. Track, hunt, rend. Eat. Sometimes it makes her feel weak. Sometimes it makes her feel weak that she can't control herself, no matter which direction she goes, which side she falls on.

no no no no no no shrieks the message under Alex's skin.

And ow, Sinclair's body answers. Ow.

She curls towards him though, even as she's trying to put back what she just let out, put it away where it can't be damaged again. She tucks herself and her arms in close, not for protection or concealment nor even warmth but because, right that moment, there is nothing else she can do. For what it's worth, she listens. Even if she's not looking at him now, if she's pushing her face into his chest and arm and her hair is blanketing him. Sinclair breathes in his scent and recognizes him in a way she doesn't when he talks.

That's where she is at the end.

Do you understand?

He's talked about someone dying. One of them getting killed. And they both know it's most likely going to be her. For all that he's more physically fragile, for all that he doesn't have skin that can turn to literal steel or the ability to come back from death, he's not the one fighting the Wyrm every time it rears up. He's not the one going to the Hive up north to fight. She is. She's the one he's texting just to find out if she's okay, for fuck's sake, or did she die in the battle she didn't even tell him about?

Of the two of them, Sinclair's lifespan is most likely the shorter. Which may be why, on top of his immaturity, it doesn't really fucking matter that she's a few years younger than he is. It isn't as though she has much time to waste, anyway.

"This is why I don't ever talk to my parents," she says eventually, huffing the words out in a laugh devoid of real humor.

[Alex] There's a beat of pause; confusion. "Does that mean you don't understand?"

[Sinclair] "I understand," she says, sniffing as she lifts her head, reaching up to push her hair back off her face. She looks at him, and the expression on her face is -- among plenty else -- partly sympathetic. "It's just... this is why I can't be around them. Cuz then they'd have to deal with it, too. Like, not just kinda distantly know it, but really have to look at me and face it.

"That I'm gonna die sooner or later. Probably sooner. Almost definitely before they do. And I don't know what that would do to them."

She's drifting, at least in her gaze, looking at his ear, his eyebrow, the line of his hair. She touches his face, then, stroking fingertips over his brow. "I don't know what that would do to my relationship with them. Or how they'd be around me. I don't know if they could deal with it. I just know that I couldn't really deal with it, if they... treated me differently, because of it."

Sinclair wriggles a little. She starts to lift herself up, to slide herself off of him finally, holding herself up over him, hands on his pillows, breasts hanging down, nipple ring dangling, too.

The smile she gives him is a small, fragile thing. "I think you kinda overthink your non-thinking about all this," she says gently, with something like understanding in it. "Which is kinda cute. And a little sad. But I do get it. I guess... even if it's selfish? I want you to feel about me the way I feel about you. And not be freaked out by it."

She leans close again. Kisses his cheek, rests her brow to his, whispers: "But I get that, too."

[Alex] Sometimes she looks at him and touches him like this: like he's something so rare and precious that he's almost unrecognizable. He sees the way her eyes rove his face, and her hand.

She sees the confusion in his eyes, the gap in his train of thought between where they were and where they are. She sees it clear as she explains, and she sees his eyes flicker closed as she lets him slide out of her, and she sees him return her smile, half-reflexively, when she smiles.

When she speaks to him gently. And touches him gently. And treats him with more gentleness and care than anyone would ever suspect her to be capable of.

Which, of course, could be said of him as well.

He lifts his chin and nuzzles her face when she comes close again. This is unhesitating, and willing. He's quiet for a moment. Then he kisses her mouth softly.

"I don't know how to define or quantify what I feel," he says. "And I don't want to define or quantify it. I don't want to label it. But baby..."

A beat of pause; a soft breath in and out. Something ironic about all this. The werewolf wants to talk. The werewolf says things, names thing for what they are. The man wants to shut his mouth. The man wants to keep things undefined, primitive, instinctual.

"Baby," again, whispering now, "can't you feel how I feel about you when we make love?"

[Sinclair] Rare and precious. Unrecognizable.

Maybe.

She kisses him again, in between words. In between one baby and the next. It's soft, while he's nuzzling her and they're laying quietly together, his cock limp now, wet from her body and his cum. She feels different, when he's no longer in her. He was with her for so long. The realization of that makes her ache a little, because it echoes what he was saying, and what it made her think.

Baby, he's whispering, and her eyes slide open, lashes pointed upward, blue eyes close to his face, her hand on his cheek. They've kissed, and kissed again, the way they always seem to.

And yes: he wants to keep it loose, wordless, primitive, feral. And Sinclair wants to tell him how she feels. She wants to hear it back. She wants to call it what it is, goddammit. She wants to know what it means. What it means to him, ironically.

To her, if she goes by instinct alone, primal longing alone, it already has a name, and it doesn't matter how soon or fast it is, it doesn't matter how scary it is, it doesn't matter how against the rules of North American human courtship it may be. For Sinclair, all that matters is knowing there's even a little willingness to him. A little bit of welcome. As much effort as it takes for him not to think about this, not to drive himself crazy and terrified with the naming of things,

it takes her that much to hold back. To force feeling into words. To not let the wolf he's allowing over the threshhold to take over, and take everything.

To not set her teeth in his flesh, mark him -- even if gently -- and tell him You are mine, and no other's, and I will die before I turn from you.

She does not do that. She tells him she's not ready to move into his apartment, his den. She lets him know she's scared of her relationships with her kin, the way it hurts them to know how tenuous her life is, how brutal it is. She allows him to see that it hurts her to think he might be careless with her. With her heart. She confesses that she's falling for him. And in a hundred other ways, she uses human words and human emotions to wrap around the wolf inside the girl, to keep it from scaring him away.

Which is, like so much else, pretty damn ironic.

A moment. Two. She nods slowly, then a little faster. "Yeah," she whispers back. "Every time."

[Alex] And

they kiss, and kiss again. They're so close that it takes only a lift of his chin, a press of his mouth to hers. The first one: closelipped, gentle. The second: longer, lingering, soft and sighing.

Then he just stays for a while. Settled on one elbow, his taut, honed body lazy and lax on the bed. His hand on her face, or around her waist, or ... somewhere. It doesn't matter where; only that his hand is on her, and their bodies touch, and his brow rests to hers, and his eyes are closed.

"Every time," he murmurs back to her, as though this says something, or means something. And he breathes quietly.

A little later -- perhaps a long time later -- he moves again. Tips his chin up, kisses her one more time. Then he sits up, rotating the shoulder that's grown stiff from carrying his weight all this time. "Come on," he urges her quietly. "Let's shower and crawl into bed."

A pause. He's scooted to the edge of the bed by then, sits there with his bare feet on the ground, hands on the side of the mattress. He looks at her, whether she's standing up or still sitting on the bed.

"Why don't you come back here tomorrow night too?" he asks, his voice quiet still. "I know you're not ready to move in yet, but ... I'd like it if you came back."

[Sinclair] Instinct tells her that it is good, very good, to gather around the soft things and curl up amongst them. Instinct tells her that this male's sweat and her sweat mingling on their skins is good. Very good. That his cum inside of her and his body next to hers is good, and that because they have fucked and fucked again, it means they must have eaten enough, and so now it is time to sleep.

It's the rest of her that wants to shower. That knows how fastidiously he keeps himself, and that knows all the rules and remembers the ways of being human, because she was human for so long. And because she lives so close to humans, in general, simply by virtue of the tenets of their tribe. She likes showering with him. Warm water, naked flesh, small space. Close. She likes wrapping her arms around him from behind while he's washing his face, likes closing her eyes and resting her face against his shoulderblade, letting the water pour down over them both.

So she rouses herself, slowly and gently now, because the longer he stayed quiet and held her and kissed her and simply was with her, the closer she got to sleepiness, which for Sinclair is not so much a slippery slope as a greased one.

She rolls over as he sits up, moving himself to the edge of his bed. She starts to push herself up on her elbows, stretching her legs out. They were bent, folded around him, straddling him, for a very long time. He looks at her over his shoulder, and she looks back at him, naked and, well, let's be blunt: very thoroughly fucked.

Sinclair nods, slowly. "Maybe... you could give me a key. And I can come over whenever." She says this without hesitation, but she says it carefully, as though she's not sure if the offer was all or nothing. If taking it by steps --

first a change of clothes and a toothbrush. hair ties. oh look, tampons. some extra food in the fridge, the beer she likes. a nightstand.

-- is okay.

[Alex] He's looking over his shoulder at her, then. His bare shoulder, still bearing traces of his Rio tan. His unscarred back. The broad wings of musculature on his upper back; the leans furrows on his lower. They all move, synchronous, synergistic, as he shifts his weight gently. And he smiles suddenly.

Then, without another word, he gets up and walks out of the room. While he's out in the living room she can hear him zap the TV off; the Xbox too. She can hear his keychain clink. He comes back in, still naked and sweaty, his short hair as tousled as short hair can possibly be, unthreading a key from his lanyarded keychain.

And he tosses it to her, just like that. No hesitation; not so much as a word before he just got up and did it. "I don't have a spare," he says, smiling widening, going a little crooked, "so you should make a copy tomorrow and like... come back here at night. So I can get into my own apartment, and all."

It's practically blackmail.

[Sinclair] The second Alex gets off the bed and starts towards the door, Sinclair moves forward suddenly as though to grab him, stop him, keep him from getting more than a matter of inches away from her. She holds back. She dislikes this: him being out of sight right now, him not being there. She tensed almost automatically, her breath catching, and it's through concerted effort that she restrains and relaxes herself again. She licks her lips when he comes back, and catches the key.

Of course. A tiny, glimmering-in-midair thing like that, and she just plucks it out of the space it's hurtling through as though for her, such things slow down. She looks at it on her palm, and then looks at him.

"C'mere," she says, quiet. And when he does, she puts her hands on him, though one of them is wrapped around a key, and she puts her arms around his neck and gets up onto her knees on the edge of the bed, bodies flush together. "I don't really need a key," whispers Sinclair, like a reminder. "I don't wanna take yours. Cuz I never know what's gonna happen from night to night, and I could be on my way over here and get held up and then you'd be stuck out in the rain or something."

She kisses him. "I'm going to come back, okay? I want to. I really, really want to."

An awkward, quirking little smile then. "You can always come by the Brotherhood, too, y'know? And we can go out to my car and make out or whatever."

[Alex] Okay? "Okay," he agrees. "But I'll make you a key tomorrow. And you can pick it up tomorrow night when you come back."

His arms wrap around her waist; hers around his neck. It's natural. It's good. This is good, he thinks again, amorphously. He closes his eyes when she kisses him, brief or long. And he laughs a little when she says he can come by the broho, nodding.

"I know. But I like it more when you come here."

He steps back, then, tightening his arms around her to lift her from the bed, set her down on the floor. "Come on," he urges gently. "Shower. Then snooze."

[Sinclair] "Yeah," Sinclair says, breathy, with that edge that all but serves as a warning. "Then we can do more than make out." And she's pressing against him more, kissing him again, this time longer. This time deeper. And he might, like the neighbors earlier, think

Jesus Christ, again?

because of how obvious it is that Sinclair could, and would, fuck him again now if he let her. But she seems to understand: it's past his internal clock. She also doesn't want to push. She doesn't want to be told no, either.

She smiles when he steps back, lifting her off the bed and sliding her off. Her legs swing down and she sets her feet on the carpet, on top of whatever clothes got dropped to the floor when they came in here. She has her hands on his arms, and holds onto the key until they're in the bathroom, setting it on the edge of the sink while he's letting the water warm. Her fingers comb through her hair, which is tousled and a little tangled, humming a song from an old -- as in, before she was born -- Don Bluth movie.

When she kisses him in the shower, the curtain pulled closed, it isn't rife with wanting. It's slow, her hands on his waist and her face tilted up towards his. And it's warm, like the water is warm, like her body is always warm, like the way she looks at him sometimes -- often -- is warm.

And when the water's off and they're scuffing towels over their skins, Sinclair gets most of the water out of her hair and then braids it. She mutters something about needing to clean her nails, the enamel's chipping. She's yawning, while he's flossing and she's looking in the cabinet for her toothbrush only to be laughingly informed it's right there, baby, about two inches from her hand on the side of the sink.

He clicks off the light in the bathroom when they leave it, naked as they went in but far cleaner. She pulls the covers that they fucked on top of back while he closes the bedroom door. She crawls over to 'her' side, windowside, laying on her back. He comes in after her, while she holds out her arms and makes slow, silly imitations of grabby-hand.

"Come," she says, smiling. "Come come come."

He comes. He puts his arms around her, and she puts her arms around him, and it doesn't matter how small the bed is or not because they sleep closely entwined anyway.


For breakfast they have coffee and ice cream and apple pie. And it's good. It's very good.