stay.

[Sinclair] Over a week now since she earned her rank. A night of celebration, followed by a week of study. Stilted, awkward conversations with a metal gaffling who knows no English just as she knows no Spirit. After that, another Gift learned, and a risky one: she could fail. She could fail more easily than, once upon a time, she would have allowed herself to believe. Not just fail, but be thrown into the unknown, for indefinite periods of time, to Gaia knows what fate.

Sinclair has spent a week learning, meditating, and working on her archives. She's recorded everything she remembers from the challenge, and looking for warcry2007 on GW.net redirects to the profile of brutal_revelation now.

The last Alex has heard from Sinclair was just a couple of days after they last saw each other. She sent him an email, because he was asleep at the time, mostly to tell him three things:

don't forget to do your taxes

i can't wait to see you again :)

found this on youtube. i'm like 16, lol. look for the little spinny one.

which links him to someone's home video of a cheerleading championship competition that took place about 5 years ago in North Carolina. The team in the video is a decent mix of boys and girls, all of whom have the sort of raw athleticism that needs more outlet than cheering at football games. It's impossible to see faces, given the quality of the video and the distance of the kids to the camera, but at about the 1:26 mark it becomes clear what Sinclair meant by 'the little spinny one'. That would be the girl tossed some ridiculous distance into the air, arms tight to her body and legs together, who -- yes -- spins around in the air two or three times before dropping back into the basket, only to be gently bounced out onto her little sneakered feet.

Hard to see. Purple and white uniforms with black accents. Blonde hair in some curled and beribboned updo. Lots of bobbing, bouncing, flipping, dancing, yelling, loud music... it's a cheerleading competition, and the label on the video says Nationals.

In any case, that's all he hears from his supposed girlfriend for about ten days. She didn't tell him: I'm going to a community center run by Spirals and their dirty little minions. I'm going to kill. A lot. And she didn't call later to say she was okay, and she didn't call later to say An Adren died and somehow everybody else in the fucking world lived. She didn't call to tell him she was challenging, or the outcome. She hasn't even been online, and apparently she hasn't had her fucking phone with her, and put simply, she's been disturbingly impossible to reach.

Til someone knocks on his door around his lunchtime on Tuesday.

[Alexander] 6:04am the day after she sends the email, she gets a reply:

im brushin my teef. u should come over soon. did my taxes in jan like smrt ppl do. also wtf, that was not spinny, that was like spaceship endeavour launch.

Sent from my iPhone!

--which, if she knows anything about iphones, means he actually turned off auto-capitalization and auto-correct in order to tap out l337speak. Either that or he's trained the poor thing to recognize it.

Night of the assault, she gets a text from him around 2am. It's short, it's to the point, it's capitalized and semi-grammatical.

Everything go ok?

She either replies, or she doesn't.

[Sinclair] So not entirely out of communication.

Yeah. Cleaning up.

[Alexander] So -- not entirely out of communication. Which is good, because otherwise Tuesday lunchtime might've gone differently. He might've thrown the door open and yelled at her. You fuck, I thought you were dead! He might've thrown the door open and mauled her face, too, but typically things like that only happen in hollywood movies. He might've burst into tears at the sight of her, but typically things like that only happen in lifetime originals.

So: most likely, things would've started with a fight. However, she does text back, he does know she's fucking alive, so a few minutes after her text she gets one back:

k :)

and then they're incommunicado for a few days. And now it's Tuesday. And she knocks on the door, and he yells WAIT A MINUTE and then a minute or so later he comes to the door with his hands wet from a fresh wash and what smells like barbecue chicken in the air. By which we mean: thawed frozen chicken breast patties drenched in barbecue sauce, microwaved.

He yells at her anyway. He yells, "BABY!" and then he grabs her one-armed, smooches her, sets her down, kicks the door shut. "Can't talk, sustenance making. Have you eaten? Grab some chicken out of the freezer and heat 'em up in the microwave if you haven't." Behind him, his toaster pops up two slices of bread. "I'm making BBQ chicken sandwiches."

[Sinclair] A few days. Ten of them, his in familiar routine, hers in intense study. Tonight there'll be no moon at all, at least nothing to see of it in the sky, and she is neither glowing with energy nor depletion, nor is her rage so close to the surface that it seems she might snap at any little thing. She isn't expecting him to maul her face or burst into tears, but had he not texted her that 2am when she was covered in blood and dragging the leg of a rather warped fomor across the room, she'd be expecting him to punch her in the face.

Sinclair never asked him how the fuck he even knew something was going on. It made her angry. Enough has happened between now and then she's forgotten most of the anger, but it doesn't sit well with her, all the same. It lurks in the back of her mind, twisting in on itself like a snake coiling for sleep.

She didn't call before coming, this time. She just came, which explains at least part of the exuberance in his greeting. "Ack," she blurts, when he grabs her the way he does. He can feel her tense against his arm, the muscles in her core strong and immediately, instantly, instinctively resistant. It may be surprise that has her basically just hanging there while he smooches her, blinking a couple of times when he lets go and rattles off at the mouth about lunch.

BBQ chicken sandwiches.

Sinclair reaches out, grabs him by the collar, and yanks him back towards her. Hollywood movie or no, she kisses him like she hasn't seen him in going on two weeks, like an Adren died and plenty of others nearly did, like she's spent so much time alone in the last week that the sudden but fleeting physical contact of a one-armed-squeeze-hoist-hug-smooch was like raking fingernails down some internal chalkboard. So her hand is tight as it grips his shirt, and her mouth is devouring, and she's leaning into him like she's going to eat him alive,

and after a second or two of this, she's moaning with hot, hungry little sounds against his lips.

[Alexander] The thing is, Alex knows people. He doesn't know he knows people, because they're just people he knows, but he does. He's got a network. People he keeps in contact with. Contacts. When he isn't working out religiously or banging on the drums or playing his Xbox or fighting or performing some gig with some mostly-mediocre band -- and granted, this does leave only slivers of time here and there -- he's hanging out online, poking around facebook. He's looking to see what people are up to. He's chatting with them or calling them on the phone. Sometimes he's even calling them on the phone while he's out for his afternoon jog, or banging through a set of reps on the weights. Or just talking to them.

And they're people who knows things, who tell him things not just when he asks but all the time because -- well. They're buddies. And he's talkative, and surprisingly easy to talk to if you can ignore the -isms. Sexism, chauvinism, assholeism, etc. And somewhere along the line, GW.net or some sparring buddy at the gym who also happens to be bloodlined to the fenrir or --

somewhere along the line, without even digging for it, information came to him.

Heard the wolves down your way are gonna rampage some wyrm youth center. You haven't heard? Dude. Saturday night entertainment for them.

Anyway: he knew. And he checked on her, at two in the morning no less, and slept sounder afterward

though that very fact made him sleep a little less sound the night after.

Nevermind. In the past now. Now he's making BBQ chicken sandwiches and she's -- not letting him go grab his bread. Not buns, but slices of bread, for those interested: that is the level of meal one should expect at Alex's. She's grabbing him by the collar, though, or what passes as a collar on his bright red t-shirt, and hauls him back, and he's making a surprised laughing hey--! when her mouth meets him and turns it into a muffled he--mmmghh! that settles into a mmmm while

they kiss like she might've died. And she starts to moan. And he wraps his arms around her and hoists her up on his compact, ripped little frame, forgetting about his BBQ chicken exploding in the microwave, forgetting about his bread cooling on the toaster, forgetting about all of that in favor of setting Sinclair's back to the fridge and, quite frankly, eating her mouth.

[Alexander] [back to the DOOR.]

[Sinclair] Truth be told, Sinclair didn't come close to dying. Without the gift that Tripoli just taught her, even, she was barely even scratched. The worst of the battle was underground, far below her, and it killed one and nearly killed four others. She was not afraid. There was no point that she thought she might not walk away from it not only okay but damn near unscathed.

So she kisses him, too, like she simply missed him, and he presses her against the door. She does not let him pick her up, doesn't wrap her legs around him. They aren't so different in height and size that Alex can move her with unthinking ease -- then again, he might try, just because half the time he does act like he's unthinking.

Sinclair knows better. She wraps her arms around him. She holds him close, leaning against the door, her hands sliding to the back of his neck, the back of his head, the heels of her hands below his ears.

"I missed you," she whispers, when she stops to breathe. "I really missed you."

[Alexander] The microwave has stopped by then. Now and again it beeps to remind them that, hey! There's food in here. They both ignore it, though, and though Alex did, in fact, try to pick Sinclair up without thinking, her resistance means they're simply leaning one into the other, right now, and into the door.

And her hands are on his head, behind his neck, behind his skull. And his ... match, actually, the line of his thumb following the back of her ear.

She missed him, she says. He kisses her again, lighter, and then laughs a little. "Hey," he says again, quietly, "what's going on? Everything okay?"

[Sinclair] Beep!

Hey.

Beep!

Hey, guys.

Beep!

HEY. GUYS. FOOD. CHRIST.

They ignore it. Sinclair holds to Alex's head, and she doesn't have to have her arms around him now for him to be leaning heavily into her, for the two of them to simply press together like it will make up for something. When he stops blathering about chicken and she stops mauling his face, long enough for them to just be for a moment, he can tell something is different about her. The way she holds herself almost makes it look like she's taller. She's twenty-two years old, very recently, and the first time he really looks in her eyes

they nearly look a different color. The blue is less pale, has a green-gray flicker to it that makes it look like deep water in summer, will remind him of Rio. Sinclair herself seems, suddenly, like deeper waters. It's hard to explain, just as it's hard to adjust to. But she seems different.

The second time she kisses him, it's softer. Not light so much as... soft. Her tenderness is translated through her mouth. She breathes in deeply, parts their lips to exhale, and nuzzles him, her face rubbing heavy and warm against his own. "I challenged for my rank," she mutters, mouth close to his skin mostly because she doesn't want to separate. "I spoke the truth, and then I hunted with my pack. I killed and it fed them, fed me. We stayed warm together. I've been in the spirit world for ..." hesitation, uncertainty, "days." To keep it vague.

She draws back, not kissing him again as she does but nuzzling. "Who told you about the battle?"

[Alexander] When they part for the moment -- the light indirect this far from the window, though at least his apartment faces southeast -- she looks different. It'd be easy to say she looks older or more mature, but that's not it. She simply looks:

more.

He's about to ask when she kisses him again. And his eyes, which are a surprisingly warm hazel when they aren't being a brittle, glittering, vicious hazel, close. Her back arches as she presses into him. His head tilts as he deeps the kiss, and then lets it part.

They breathe together for a moment. She tells him why she's different. His brow flickers for a second, not because he's unhappy but because he can't quite understand, and never will, what it means to gain rank, to hunt with a pack, to travel the spirit world.

It passes. "I'm happy for you," he says, which is true, and a truer thing than I'm so happy! or congratulations! could ever be. After all, both of those require some basic, intuitive grasp on what she's accomplished.

A quiet, half-embarrassed scoff, then. "Just some guy I know. Old buddy of mine from Miami. Lives up in Milwaukee now. I wasn't asking around about you or anything. He just IMed me Saturday and was all, dude, how's the battle going? Apparently they'd heard of it up there and were all eager to hear about it."

A short pause.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

[Sinclair] Perhaps it's unfair of her not to keep this in mind: what he is as opposed to what she is, how fundamentally different it makes them, the gulf of separation it creates. Perhaps it's a sort of blindness, or a sort of innocence: it may be that Sinclair understands, but does not grasp, the chasm that can't be crossed. Maybe it's willful refusal to acknowledge it as all that important, in the end. Any more important than his age, or his education, as opposed to hers. Or her ability to bear and nurse children, which he lacks. Differences.

She tells him anyway that she challenged for her rank, that she hunted with her pack, that she lost herself in the umbra for awhile learning the gifts given to those of her kind who are a bit older, a little wiser.

Sinclair just lifts an eyebrow, slightly, for half a second when he tells her that people up in Milwaukee were wondering what the fuck was going on in Chicago. Well: Elk Grove. The corner of her mouth tugs outward, wry, when he assures her he wasn't asking around after her.

Her hands are moving down to his waist, down to his lower back.

BEEP.

"Cuz I didn't want you to worry."

[Alexander] This is self-defense, as thoughtlessly reflexive as the violent way he'd react if a mugger randomly jumped him in the street: "Aw, and you thought I'd worry. That's cute."

The shiteating smirk slips off his face a second later. He looks at her seriously, starkly. A beat or two go by.

This is truth:

"Baby, I worry more when I end up hearing about this shit from someone up in Milwaukee. It makes me think it's really big, really nasty, really dangerous, if everyone's talking about it. And then it makes me think the only reason you didn't tell me was because you didn't think you'd make it."

He takes his hands from her face, then. Straightens up, scuffing his knuckles over his short hair, then turning to go get food from the beeping microwave.

"It's not that I want you to alert me every single time you fight a wyrmtainted cat in an alley or something. 'Cause seriously, no, I don't But the big stuff? I'd rather know. Okay?"

[Sinclair] She doesn't laugh at the self-defense, or the smirk. Her gaze is level, and they're still close, and she doesn't quirk her eyebrow or stare him down to a crumbling mess of humanity on the entryway floor. It seems more like she's just waiting for it to pass, like the friends and family members of people who stutter or twitch for some reason just relax. Without mockery. Without judgement.

Though the fact that this is how she responds to it casts a rather unpleasant light on that kneejerk response of his, like it's a tic, like it's a sickness. Maybe.

In any case: Sinclair just waits, and they look at each other. She listens. And when he pulls away, she grabs a hold of his lower back, keeping him right where he is. "It was really big, and really nasty," she says quietly. "But if I thought I wasn't gonna make it, I would've told you."

The converse to what he's saying: thinking she wouldn't tell him, if she was thinking she might not come out of there okay. "It wasn't exactly a wyrmtainted cat in an alley," Sinclair admits, "but ...yeah. I know what you're saying, I just didn't want you to worry about it. I wasn't in the worst of it."

[Alexander] So -- a second time she holds him where he is. A second time he stays.

Another human might be screaming by now. Might be bawling in terror. But he told her once already: every human and near-human she ever meets will be terrified by her on some level. Every single one. And of that number, he's going to be better than most.

And he is. He's not screaming. Or bawling. Or pleading for his life. He does tense a little when she holds him, but it passes. And he looks at her. And he says -- gently:

"I know. But next time, let me decide whether or not to worry. If I need you to protect me, Sinclair, I'll ask. I will."

[Sinclair] Give her this: she has the sense, or the kindness, or whatever it is, not to tell him that it isn't going to be up to him. That he wants to decide if he worries is true. That she worries about him worrying is also true. That sometimes even if it's big she won't be able to tell him. That the fact that she sees how he tenses when she holds him and seems hesitant and uncomfortable when he's concerned for her safety are all a part of why she doesn't tell him:

I'm going to protect you anyway.

And give her this, too: she doesn't nod, or promise him anything, because she'd be lying. She leans over and kisses him instead, breathing a calmer but still-deep version of the way she did when she first arrived.

Because she missed him.

"I'm not hungry," she says when they part again, and her hands finally let him go. "You eat."

Beep! You guys are fucking killing me, here.

"I just really wanted to be around you for awhile."

[Alexander] A few months ago, Alexander would've never said: if I need you to protect me, I'll ask. He would've never ever said: If I need you to protect me. Then again, he probably wouldn't have agreed to some sort of exclusivity clause with a fucking werewolf, either. He would've very likely attempted to avoid sex with a werewolf, period.

Things change. And like everything else that changes, Alex doesn't remark on it. Or dwell on it. It was this way. Now it's this way.

Life goes on.

She doesn't promise that next time she'll tell him. She kisses him again, and then she tells him to go eat. To go shut that damn microwave up. This time he's the one that stays where he is.

"You're still not going to tell me," he says, not a question. "Are you."

[Sinclair] A moment, longer than one for dramatic effect. She's thinking. Then she's speaking:

"I don't always know how bad it's going to be. I've been in two alleyway fights with other Garou that looked like nothing. Some smelly flying monster. These shadow guys. And one of those times, I got possessed by the wyrm, killed one of my allies, and brought down two others who had to rage back to life." She says all this matter-of-factly, but her tone, at least, is soft. "The other time, we had this thing nearly dead when it shoved its talon through Marrick and the next thing I know we're delivering her body to her pack."

She lifts her hand, touches his chest, her fingers curled in on her palm so that it's her knuckles that brush over his shirt. Almost like she was going to knock, and thought better of it. Her hand falls away, back to her side. "Sometimes I'll tell you. And sometimes I won't. There's going to be half a dozen reasons for it either way, and it isn't just me not wanting you to worry. This time that was the main one."

Her hair's down, straw-colored, reminiscent of late summer wheat. Her shirt's olive drab under a white hoodie, over a pair of severely distressed jeans. She's pretty enough that it's hard to disguise, no matter what she wears. Not a lot of pretense either way with Sinclair right now, though.

"If I can tell you, if I need you to know, if I remember that you'd rather I tell you, if I think something might seriously go wrong, if I have a chance... I'll tell you. If only so you don't look like an out of the loop idiot when your Milwaukee buddy asks you 'how goes the battle'."

[Alexander] And he's listening. About halfway through, when her hand comes to rest on his chest -- which is not terribly wide but is thick with muscle, because strength is not so much genetically bestowed to him as worked for, clawed for, eked out of nearly nothing -- he glances down. A little after that, when she says this time that was the main one, he opens his mouth to speak

but she's not finished yet, so he closes his mouth again. And a little later he doesn't need to speak after all, because she says the rest of what she says, and some of the argument goes out of his stance, his face.

He studies her for a moment as though to ascertain whether or not she's telling him the truth. She is. Sinclair couldn't lie to save her life. Neither can Alex. Maybe that's why this actually works. In its own, make-do, cobbled-together way, it works.

"Okay," he says. And then he laughs a little, because no, he doesn't like looking like an out of the loop idiot. "Okay," he says again, and then pushes off the door and goes,

finally,

to get his cooling chicken sandwich out of the microwave.

[Sinclair] She is perhaps one of the last people in Chicago, barring a few Ahrouns and one in particular, that anyone would expect to be chill. Who one could imagine as being patient, as being relaxed as well as relaxing, whose presence can occasionally be a balm rather than a constant source of stress. Yet: the argument, if not the sheer primal will to fight, goes out of Alex's frame when she tells him a heavily disclaimered, qualified I'll tell you, which is what he wanted in the first place.

Even if wanting it sets him almost as ill at ease as the knowledge one night that she was fighting and hadn't told him and people in motherfucking Wisconsin were aware of it because it was that big of a deal and what if --

Something about Sinclair, or her choices, or her words, makes Alex's hackles settle again, and neither he nor she comment further on what she just told him: that Marrick, his one-night (two-night?) fuck buddy who tried to claim him as her ward, what the fuck, was impaled and killed so close to Sinclair that she was wiping the Fury's bloodsplatter off her face before she drove Joey and the body to the La Familia packhouse.

He turns to go and her hand touches his arm, squeezes once, before she heads into the living room, stripping out of her hoodie. "I got another name," she says, like it's a merit badge. Well: not quite. But with a certain amount of uncertain pride, as though she's not sure that he'll give a fuck about this, but is telling him anyway. "Speaking of being in the loop. The Fostern I challenged called me Brutal Revelation when she passed me. So, ah... I don't know. If you hear that one around or see it on the net, that's me."

[Alexander] They reach out to each other like this, parting. Her hand squeezes his arm. His skin is warm, nearly hot, like it always is: like he's constantly just coming down from a workout, or emerging from a hot shower, or simply burning up with his own insatiable energy, jittering in place like an energized electron.

And his hand comes up as hers is letting go. He catches her, wrist to wrist, squeezes back for a second. Then they let go for good, and he goes get his sandwich.

And comes out with it, holding it over a small plate so he won't drip BBQ sauce everywhere. "Huh," he says, mouth full, tension subsided quick as that. "That's a cool name. I don't think I've seen any around GW.net lately, so you might actually be the only active Brutal Revelation right now.

"I kinda like Warcry better, though," he adds. "It's very you."

[Sinclair] Though Sinclair is the wolf, Alex is the one who greets her when she comes in by barking out BABY! and bounding to her, bearhugging her. It isn't quite the singleminded, tongue-lolling adoration of a golden retriever, but maybe the excitement of a smaller dog. A terrier of some kind, perhaps, capable of biting viciousness and pretending to be larger and tougher than it is. She doesn't compare him mentally to a dog, though; the only one she ever had was a rottweiler, and even though she was still a child herself,

it pissed itself, tail tucked, whimpering, whenever she came around. They tried to train it. It got older. It began barking wildly, savagely, whenever Sinclair got near it. It would never attack her, only claw at the floor and bristle angrily, trying to look threatening so that she would leave it alone.

Sinclair left it alone. A very nice family from church adopted the dog after a conversation after services with her dad. Eleven years old, then, the girl herself stood outside with her arms tightly crossed and thought of the old phrase about Kansas: stand on a rock and you'll see forever.

She'd named him Valentine. His new family called him Boomer.

In any case: Sinclair is sprawled into the corner of his couch when Alex comes back out, stuffing his face. She flicks her eyebrows up. "That's part of why I like the new one," she mutters, "not a hundred fucking others running around."

[Alexander] He cocks his shoulder against the wall and leans there, legs crossing at the ankles, as he munches his cooled-toasted-microwaved-frozen-chicken-patty-burger-drowned-in-barbecue-sauce. That's another piece of her history he doesn't know -- that she had a dog named Valentine once, a rottweiler that didn't so much hate her or want to hurt her as it was terrified of her and wanted her not to hurt it.

Nevermind that she was eleven. And a little girl. And the dog probably weighed a hundred twenty pounds of tight-packed muscle full-grown.

There's a lot they don't know about each other, though, which is true of any couple just starting out. Alex doesn't mind. Sometimes he asks about her -- purposefully, interestedly, though it's as much to connect with her and hear her speak and see what she'll speak about as it is to find out about her. And sometimes he's just happy to see her, bounding to greet her at the door while his less-than-gourmet lunch heats itself.

"So what's the other reason?" he asks now. "Or reasons."

[Sinclair] To this, she just shrugs. "Because it fits, too. Not necessarily better or worse, just... it's a different part of me. And not a part that most people see too easily. Or want to see." Another shrug; dismissive. The topic seems to aggravate her. It isn't anger. It's more like... distraction.

She kicks gently at one of the ugly-ass pillows on his couch. "You're far away."

This being relatively speaking: the apartment is so small he could be curled up in bed and he wouldn't really be 'far'. She'd be able to hear him breathing, most likely. But then again, if he were curled up in bed, she'd very likely be curled up right beside him. "Please come closer." And if it wasn't obvious enough: "I really missed you, Alex."

[Alexander] He's not far away out of fear or distaste. He's far away because he's eating, and messily at that, and because sometimes he's so intensely tuned to singular little tasks -- eating, or running, or cooking -- that he forgets about others.

Alexander looks up at her when she asks him to come closer, though. When she adds please in front of it, that makes him frown lightly. Then he straightens up off the wall and comes across the room, which is to say, walks forward about three steps.

He turns his back and sits on the couch. She's sprawled across it, which means they have to squish a little, and even then -- his lower back touches her stomach. He takes another bite, and then he leans back into her, and into the back of the couch, sighing in contentment as he does.

"You don't have to say please, you know," he says. She said she wasn't hungry, but he breaks off a little piece of his sandwich anyway and hands it to her. Alexander Vaughn, master chef. "I like it when you're here."

[Sinclair] When Alex turns around to sit not at the other end of the couch but right on the same cushion as her, Sinclair shifts to accomodate him. She turns more on her side, moves her legs back while he sits down. Her arm, warm and lean, slinks around his waist gently. She props herself up on the arm of the couch, watching him eat.

"I know," she says quietly, and then leans forward and opens her mouth, taking the bite directly from his hand, chewing on it a few times before she swallows. Licks her lips. "But I'ma guest. And my mama raised me right."

[Alexander] "Well," he takes his hand back after she eats the bite from his fingertips, polishing off the last of the sandwich himself, "I guess I don't really think of you as my guest. My girlfriend, maybe. But not like, y'know. A guest." He looks around his tiny living room. "Pretty crappy place to entertain guests, if you ask me."

[Sinclair] "Maybe?" she echoes this softly, with something of a teasing smile playing on her lips as she holds him, lays behind him, watches him as he eats, knowing that sooner or later it'll be the gym or writing or a fight or something or other. Or her pack will call. Or Tripoli will show up and start banging into the radiator. He is still determined to make friends. He'll wear that radiator's impassive exterior down yet.

She teases him with that 'maybe': his girlfriend, 'maybe'. Sinclair wraps her arm more tightly around him, holds him for a moment, just... squeezing. Then relents, because he's eating, and maybe it isn't gourmet but when Sinclair remembers to eat sometimes it's either a protein bar or an animal she finds, slaughters, and eats wholesale, gnawing marrow out of the bones to satiate not only her hunger but some other, animal drive to provide for herself by her own strength and cunning.

So Alex eats, and his girlfriend-maybe draws her fingertips over his t-shirt and thus his flesh in a lazy 8, up through the middle axis, around, up again, around, up, around, up, around, up. Slow.

"I like it here," she says. "It's bigger than my room at the Brotherhood. Doesn't have Theron here. No packmates. No other Walkers or Galliards. Nobody watching and judging. Everything here smells like you. You let me be here without freaking out over a toothbrush." You let me in. She lays down, and her arm around him loosens further, but she just lounges, stroking his back and talking to him while he eats his sandwich. "But it's still your home, at least for now.

"And I don't mind being a guest in it, even if I'm a pretty privileged one." She cocks a lazy grin, lopsided and pleasant. "So. Y'know. I just don't think it's cool to be making a bunch of demands of you in your own place. So I use my manners. Please and thank you."

She levers herself up slowly, then, elbow to the armrest and pushing herself up til she can rest her chin on his shoulder, voice dropping to a murmur: "And sometimes you like it," Sinclair says, her breath against that tender spot between jawbone and earlobe. Warm. Humid, "when I say please."

[Alexander] "Well," he amends, "basically-my-girlfriend. I didn't know if you'd prefer another term like. I dunno. Consort." He laughs.

Then he's quiet, eating his sandwich, mming under his breath as she strokes her fingers up and down his front, and then up and down his back. There's something primitively, primally enjoyable about tactile contact. Makes him understand why cats wind around your feet, and why dogs stretch out for belly-rubs.

Then she's rising up behind him, and he's finishing up his sandwich and setting the empty, crumbly, sauce-y plate down on the coffee table. He wipes his hands on a paper towel and balls that up into a wad, tosses it atop the plate, finds her hands and wraps her arms around him from behind. His torso feels solid and dense and warm --
like he's tough, like he's resilient, like she couldn't tear him open with a flick of her claws if she wanted to,

which she doesn't. And which, at least most of the time, he doesn't seem to be afraid of. He lets her behind him. He turns his back to her with little thought. He lets her put her mouth close to the vulnerable spots of his body -- the back of his neck, the soft spot where neck and jaw and ear meet, the hollow of his throat -- and he
seems to enjoy it.

Turning, he kisses her over his shoulder, and then smiles as he turns forward again. "I plead the fifth," he says.

A pause. Then, "Whatcha mean 'at least for now'?"

[Sinclair] Another term. Consort, he jokes, but he doesn't bring up the word he did in Rio that made Sinclair backpedal so hard she nearly fell out of that king-sized bed. Sinclair just smirks wryly now, holding him and touching him and nuzzling his neck, murmuring words against his earlobe, which she nips at softly

but only after they kiss, brief as it is. A smooch over his shoulder. She nips then, as he's turning around, and rubs her face lightly against the place where neck flows into shoulder. "Uh, that it's not like this is necessarily where you're going to live forever and ever?" she says, sounding a trifle taken aback by the question. "'For now' as in this is the place, for now, that's yours."

She pulls back a bit, looking at him. "What'd you think, I was talking about moving in someday and taking over?"

[Alexander] A second of pause. Then he swivels at the waist, twisting around to face her.

"Well, yeah. Sort of. Maybe not taking over, but I thought that was some sort of foreshadowing that you might move in or something."

[Sinclair] Her brow furrows at that. It isn't displeasure, it's nowhere near anger. It's thought, with traces of that earlier bewilderment. She doesn't speak while that expression is on her face, brief as that time is. Then Sinclair just shakes her head a little, shifting around on the cushions until she's sitting right beside his hip. Her right leg drapes over his lap. Her left leg rests behind his back. Her knees are akimbo, her posture full of laziness that can't conceal either her newfound authority and self-containment or her sheer predatory grace.

With Sinclair, the intimation is always there that any embrace, any position, could become lethal in an instant, moving from gentle to savage in half a heartbeat.

Except that doesn't happen, and she's lazy and warm and comfortable with him. Here.

"I really only want from you what you offer, Alex," she says quietly. "I wouldn't, like... foreshadow or hint about shit like that."

[Alexander] She straddles him -- sort of -- from the side. He leans back, trapping her left leg in the warm hollow between his back and the cushions. His hand drops to her right knee, strokes her leg absently.

Then he looks at her. "You could ask too, you know. Instead of just waiting on me to offer. I don't mind if you ask, as long as you can accept a no."

[Sinclair] A faint smile, to that. Quirky at the edges, young. Which she is, Fostern or not: young, by human standards. Young, in terms of how long she's been a part of the Nation. Young, in things like this.

"If I want to, I will," she says, like an assurance.

She picks up his hand -- his right one -- and deposits it gently over her face, fingers crossing over her eyes, tips at her brow. Smiles at him, and kisses his palm.

[Alexander] So:

"Good," he says, quietly. And she puts his hand on her face. And his mouth quirks into a grin, which quiets into a smile. He shifts: fingers sliding past her cheek now, cupping behind her neck as he leans in to close his eyes and kiss her mouth.

"If you're gonna around all afternoon," he says when their mouths part, "you should come to the gym with me. Hang around. Work out. Go a round in the ring if you wanna. If none of the girls'll fight you I'll totally take you on.

"Y'know," he adds, "after we fuck like easter bunnies."

[Sinclair] As far as kisses go, this one doesn't last long. Sometimes that's how it is with them: quick smooches. They're affectionate. They have a sort of intimate friendliness to them, like slow smiles when waking in the same bed together. With very little history to back it, with plenty of uncertainty to go around, they're comfortable around each other, even when they aren't always comfortable with each other.

Case in point: "I was starting to think you didn't want to," Sinclair exhales, sliding her left leg out from behind him as she puts her hands on his shoulders and swings herself around, straddling his lap, sinking down onto it.

Her hoodie is coming off a moment later, zipper down and shoulders shrugging to drag it off her arms, dropping it to the floor between the couch and the coffee table. Her shirt, then, too, arms crossing and hands grabbing the hemline to peel it up and off and over her head. Her hair flashes as it comes out of the collar again, breezes around her shoulders.

He's eye level to her chest, the smooth expanse of skin above her breasts, the dips just below her clavicles. Same bra: white, overlaid at the tops of the cups with cerulean lace, bits of blue embroidery along the straps. She puts her arms around him, sighing as though in relief, curling forward to kiss him again. No word yet on whether she plans on being around all afternoon, or if she wants to go to the gym with him, or if she's interested in decimating his or anyone else's face.

"You taste like barbecue sauce," she mutters, laughing, and kisses him again. Harder. Deeper. Pushing him back, a little, into the couch.

[Alexander] Alex laughs. "Now what," he says, and he helps her with the hoodie, peeling it off while she unzips it -- then with her shirt, tugging as she pulls, "would make you ever think that?"

A beat of pause -- while she kisses him. "Other than when I actually don't," he adds then, laughing, and he fills his hands with her tits, and then pushes the cups of her bra off and fills his hands with her breasts instead. When his fingers find her nipples, and the ring through the one, he moans into her mouth.

And then he's tugging his own shirt off, some vividly red thing with some logo or other on it, cast to the floor. He's not so tanned anymore, but hey, spring's coming even to chicago. He'll get tanned again, and even without quite the bronze tone he had in rio de janeiro he's ripped, he's hardbodied, he's every inch a welterweight jock with the bantam-rooster pride to go with it.

"Up a little, baby," he says, slapping her bottom lightly. She rises up on her knees or she doesn't; either way he starts working his jeans off, button and fly first, then arching up off the sofa to push and tug them down. His boxers go with them.

[Sinclair] "You pled the fifth when I nibbled your ear," Sinclair answers, since there actually was an answer to the question he asked.

She kisses him again, and again, and again, eating at his mouth like she can't stop herself. Even the drag of cotton across her breast makes her shudder slightly against him, especially when it flicks past her nipples. She's hypersensitive here; he knows it. He's known it since the first time he put his fucking hands and mouth on her and she bucked almost instantly. It wasn't just that so few people, so rarely, ever touch her, much less sexually. It wasn't just that it was him, wanted and finally wanting back. Some of it was, pure and simple, that she fucking loses her mind when he plays with her tits, licks and sucks at her nipples, teases that piercing as his own excitement grows.

"Take it off," she says, more a breath than a voice, but more a moan than a sigh.

The moan comes when he pulls his hands off of her to take off his own shirt. She follows him, wanton and unselfconscious, pressing into him, which probably makes taking his shirt off that much more difficult. And then her hands are on him, and once they're on him they're all over him, not tracing muscles so much as caressing them, running up his sides, smoothing over his chest, and so, and so.

Her hips grind down onto his a moment later. Alex slaps her ass, Alex starts working on his jeans, Sinclair stays right where she is, rubbing against him through two layers of denim and two layers of cotton and moaning, moaning, wriggling atop him like,

well,

like she's been thinking about this since the last time, since the second she got in the door. Like she's completely unwilling to separate, even to move up a little. Like, now that he's ready for her, she doesn't want to stop fucking him through their clothes long enough to get those clothes off.

[Alexander] "Baby," and he says this low, laughingly, as he relents -- momentarily -- and rubs his hands over her ass instead, denim notwithstanding, "baby, if you don't get up -- "

they grind together. He bucks up against her abruptly, firmly, catches her mouth in the same moment, kisses her hard. Lets go,

" -- if you don't get up, how'm I supposed to get your pants off so I can get my cock in your hot little pussy?"

And another kiss. And then he's turning, flipping over like a fish, toppling her down lengthwise on the couch as he climbs over her, and no matter what he was just saying a moment ago now he's braced over her and grinding into her, rubbing against her through her clothes in a shameless mimicry of sex with a sort of single-minded intensity that lasts

(and lasts)

until he remembers: the point. Yes. Pants. Off. Then he's rearing back and working at the clasps of her jeans, muttering, "I really need to start keeping condoms on the coffee table."

[Sinclair] They're both strong. And there are plenty of Garou of Sinclair's moon, plenty with her Rage, who aren't as strong as she is. It isn't just the War that keeps her honed. Not daily, hourly, limit-pushing workouts, either, but she takes care of herself. What she takes in, she burns off. When she's bored, which isn't often, she's in motion. She can focus, she can clear her head, she can make things make sense again, when she works up a sweat.

They're so close in height that they align in bed, on the couch, standing up, wherever they are. They match. They mesh. In the ring or in the parking lot or wherever, they can beat each other to the edge of bloody unconsciousness. They can also hold back. They have the skill. They have the ability to perceive how hard to push it, when and how to pull a punch so it cripples rather than kills. They are masters.

Were it not for that niggling awareness that by calling on her totem or calling on her rage Sinclair could destroy Alex in an eyeblink, everything between them would be... fair. But life's not fair like that. Only one twin Changed. Only one life could continue: the warrior born in moonlight and bloodlust had to survive, not the future politician or business executive or whatever it was Heather Jane might have been.

This is only as fair as they can make it, by willful choice. And by simple, rather endearing want.

Sinclair moans when he rubs her ass. She moans when he kisses her, but she doesn't seem to comprehend a goddamn word out of his mouth right now. She's moving her kisses to his throat when he's talking about putting his cock inside of her, rubbing back and forth the way she might if they were naked and she were rubbing her slick all up and down the length of his erection. Sinuous, athletic, eager, mindless.

They flip, Sinclair bouncing slightly on the sagging cushions and gasping even as she pulls him down over her again, hands on his arms, guiding them aimlessly, just on her again, back arching to press herself up to his body, cunt rubbing on his thigh til he settles between her legs. She's panting and making those little noises in between kisses, keening little notes asking for more.

"Nnnngh, no," she protests, when he pulls back to start taking her pants off. But some part of her brain kicks in, tells her he might touch her then, might rub her like he did the first time he fucked her, the way he did in the shower that one time and oh. oh yes. that was good. so she lets him go and lifts her hips when he starts yanking the denims off her body.

Her panties are a seriously low-cut string bikini. Camo. With a sparkly pink heart on the front.

Sinclair arches her back and folds her arms back, and a second later she's wriggling out of her bra, dropping it onto the coffee table while Alex is getting her jeans off her ankles now, which means her sneakers get yanked off, thump thump to the floor, socks peel halfway off, all of it, and she's half sitting up to reach for him again, to pull him on top of her again, seeking his mouth.

Condoms, he says, like he's going to get a candy bowl and keep them in there, and she shakes her head, breathing heavily. "Just fuck me without one. I want to feel you come inside me." Her hands on his face then. Her mouth on his, moaning a whimper.

[Alexander] Thwpt! go her jeans, whipped off and flung -- well, to be honest, on top of the TV. Not because he throws terribly hard but because the TV is all of about five feet away, if that. His living room has no living space. It's a cramming room. It's a sardine can. It's --

his. Everything in here smells like him. Sure, sometimes that means it smells like a rapidly growing pile of laundry, and sometimes that means it smells like yet another culinary disaster, but: it smells like him.

Anyway. There go her pants. And he sees her panties, and this makes him sit back on his heels for a moment and laugh -- not at her but ... just laugh, happily, delightedly, as the pads of his fingers stroke the pink heart. "This is ridiculous," he tells her, smiling. "I like it."

And then that goes too. And then he's leaning down over her with his unbuttoned jeans inching their way down his hips, and though she's seeking his mouth he's catching not her mouth with his but her breast, catches her nipple between his lips and the piercing between his teeth, lightly, so lightly, tugging on it with a small growl before he closes his mouth over her breast altogether and closes his eyes

and just sucks on her until her back arches. Mmming.

He stops, though, when she tells him to just fuck me without one. That stops his quite short. He lets go her breast suddenly, snaps his head up; the way the afternoon light is beginning to fill his tiny apartment, is beginning to gleam off the walls, and the way his eyes are really fucking wide open right now make the hazel seem liquid, resonant, rings and flecks of colors all mixed up.

"Wait. Are you on the Pill now?" he asks. His breathing is rapid.

[Sinclair] [tell me things!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 3, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Sinclair] The fact that this place is small has no bearing on Sinclair's appreciation of it. She grew up in the definition of wide open spaces. Those on the coasts know a thing or two about expansive skies dipping down, curving towards the ocean. Those near mountains know that sometimes it can seem that the world must, has to, simply end beyond the visible peaks, those jagged reminders that the earth has been here longer than any man, will be long after the last man dies. But both of those lack the sheer loneliness of a seemingly endless flatness met by the edge of an equally eternal sky, and you alone, jutting up between them, when the view is the same no matter what direction you look.

Sinclair likes that his place is small, and that it holds his scent and all the scents associated with him so well. She likes that the couch cushions sag like the ones she used to sleep on when she would nap on her living room couch. She likes that he drums, though he's never drummed when she's been around, because it speaks to some primal, writhing part of her that exists only when firelight throws a dark simacrulum of her body out to nowhere, when her shadow dances with trees. She likes that he is tight and hard and vicious like some furtive, angry animals. She likes that he eats stupid little meals no more complicated than heating up some meat and slapping it together with a couple of other things, because when she grew up, they often had one-dish-meal, which was ground chuck and sliced potatoes and green beans cooked all together in a skillet and served with buttered bread, because it was quick and easy and they ate it before going to Wednesday prayer meetings,

where Sinclair was a part of the youth group, and they liked the way she sang. She was always good at singing, no matter her other failures, no matter her foibles and no matter the fact that the potential for violence always seemed present even when she herself tried not to sense it.

Sinclair likes being here. She would move in if he offered. Leave the Brotherhood. Stay at the Loft just as occasionally as she does now, but live here, with him, welcome to come and go, to occupy the living room that has no living space and share Alex's bed not every night, but every night she could. She would take him as a mate, though she can't say I'm in love with him or even, honestly, I'm falling for him. She doesn't know. But the instinct in her that uncoils and recognizes what he is and what he means?

That part knows things she does not know. Things she cannot say. Things she is scared of. That part knows how to kill, and to which wolf goes the greatest portion, and how long to wait before lunging on prey, and what it means when the wind comes from the south, or when the moon is close to the earth, or when it is springtime and her instincts all say

breed

mate

nothing between us

nothing but you inside me.

The English language is her first, and her only, and it comes easily to her most of the time. She sings in it. She knows songs in Latin and Italian and other languages, but only by memorization. She knows a few phrases in French and Spanish. She knows how the human world works. It too, was her first. Her only, for a long time, until the first time she frenzied, slaughtered, died a little inside to make room for something new. She knows how to operate a motor vehicle, a computer, a million little details of daily human life.

She's a monster, though. Her nails drag on Alex's neck and back and she moans wordless and incoherent as he takes off his clothes for her, as he suckles at her breast, nibbles at her, moans over and over as he just flat-out enjoys her body, and the sounds she makes in response, and the movements of her winding hips. She pants past his scalp, her hands gentling on his body as he peels off her underwear, bares her, nothing but flesh and ink and metal and metallic green enamel on her toenails and the red-pink, wetness and heat of her pussy.

Alex is closer to humanity than she is. More human. What wolf there is in him was not strong enough to Change, not angry enough, not destined, whatever the fuck makes the difference between Kin and Garou. But there is wolf in him. There has to be, or he would not recognize hers, would not be able to withstand the nearness of any of their kind. He would not heal so quickly, would not be as strong and fast as he is, would not be tied to her people as inextricably as her people are tied to those like him.

Sinclair, simply put, needs him. As friend, lover, mate, it hardly even matters in the end, but to exist as what she is, he has to be what he is, and maybe one day she'll tell him this, but right now

all she is telling him is physical, her body responding to his, female to male, heat to heat, in the wet and warm beginning of springtime, when even the fucking trees are propogating their species.

Sinclair looks back at him, her eyes a vivid blue to his molten hazel. She nods shortly, quickly, three or four times. "Yeah," because she really does know English after all. "Yeah, baby."

[Alexander] There was shock in Alexander's eyes a moment ago. Shock and uncertainty and wariness, because while selling his genetic material on GW.net's classifieds section was one thing, the thought of actually producing a bratling himself, the old-fashioned way, with his girlfriend-consort-something-maybe, was quite another.

There was shock -- and now,

now, when she says yeah, there's a flash in his eyes, a gleam of pure lust.

Because she can't say she's in love with him. And he can't say he's falling for her. Love is, in the end, perhaps a very human construct. Animals recognize more primitive attachments: lust. Want. Hunger. Affection. Protection.

Need.

And Sinclair, Glass Walker though she may be, is more animal than human. And Alexander, mostly-human though he may be, is a quarter wolf, himself.

So he answers her the only way he knows how. He kisses her, hard enough to press her down into the sagging couch cushions, and he pushes his pants down, kicks them off, leaves them a rumpled lump at the far end of the couch. He stops kissing her only long enough to glance down, to touch her between her legs, to play with her and run his fingers between her lips and make sure she's wet, she's ready for him, she'll be all right when he just

plants his cock in her, a single slide, no time, no patience for anything but.

He groans against her mouth. And then he holds still, whispering his sorries if she flinched, waiting for her to settle if he has to, waiting until he lowers his head and groans again, against her breast this time. Muffles it when his mouth closes again on her tits, when he's all over her pierced nipple again like he just can't get enough, which is the truth, and there's nothing between them this time, nothing but his flesh and hers, him and her, male and female, heat and heat, obeying the first and most basic, most inexorable tenet of life.

He starts fucking her. Grabbing the edge of the sofa cushion, sucking on her nipple, he rolls his hips into her -- not quite slowly, no, but not roughly either. Solidly. Firmly. Once, then again, then a rhythm.

[Sinclair] Ever since that night at Islands, Sinclair avoids trying to figure out what Alex is thinking, or what he really feels for her, or what this is, or what to call it even in her own mind. What she calls it -- or him -- in her own mind isn't going to make it past her lips. Sinclair can't lie to save her life, but she can keep a secret when she wants to. To her it's another form of honesty, a different brand of protection. It's like guarding a treasure, only to get in you have to do better than answer riddles or slay a dragon.

She waits for him to tell her what he's thinking, and usually she doesn't have to wait long. Waits for those flickers of something true to come out, like when he wrapped his arms around her and gasped my girl like it surprised him to think it, like once he thought it he didn't even consider not saying it. Like she said: she'll take what he offers, if only because she realized about four years ago how finite her life really was, and every day or night that she wakes up she thinks there has to be a reason she's still alive.

When she wakes up here and he's coming back from the gym, or wakes in the middle of the night and he's out like a light, she also thinks she's kind of lucky. Not because he's so wonderful or so great or treats her so nice -- though truth be told, he does treat her pretty nice -- but because she never expected even this. Someone she liked liking her back. Someone she wanted wanting her back. Someone fucking her to screaming and then fucking her again, this time to quiet moans. Someone tangling legs and arms with her to sleep, and smiling at her when she opens her eyes.

Never expected that. Is happy with it.

Girlfriend-consort-something-maybe. It genuinely doesn't matter to her. There's only one word that really matters, and she knows enough about words and their power to know it isn't the syllable itself, the collection of sounds, that sets her nerve endings alight. That's instinct. That's something else, and few enough poets even come close to describing it. So Sinclair doesn't attempt. She waits. She accepts. She takes what Alex is willing to give, and no more, because next time she leaves, she might not come back. And she wants to make sure he has everything he needs still inside him if that happens, that she has taken nothing with her to the grave or her homeland that might leave some surprising hole in him.

So maybe she cares more than she admits to herself, more than she says aloud, is protecting him all the time, always, foolishly, as though somehow she could thwart the inevitable.

This, though. It never seemed inevitable. They grind into the couch with their naked bodies, he strokes her until she's not only moaning but wetting his fingers with her arousal, murmuring Baby pleadingly past his ear, like she wants him to do exactly as he does, which is

slide into her, impatient and lustful and damn near needing this. Her entire body seems electric for a moment then, arching and going rigid at first, relaxing a half-heartbeat later. She moans into his mouth, but she doesn't flinch, and he gasps and she groans underneath it, rolling her hips to meet his body between her legs, his cock inside her.

"Baby." she says again, when he takes his mouth off hers. Sinclair's head is back, her eyes closed, her body stretched out and laid out except for her legs wrapping around him, holding him where he is. "Baby, don't stop kissing me," though he knows she loves it when he licks at her breasts like this, sucks on them like he can't get enough, which is true. There's hardly any break in her speech before this, coming right on the tail end of her plea: "-- you feel so fucking good."

So sometimes she asks for things he doesn't offer. "Kiss me," she says again, more of a whimper this time, heedless that her blatant and unabashed want for him might make him lose interest, uncaring that it's entirely possible he won't ever care more for her than he does now, thinking only: "I want your mouth. Alex, baby," fading away into gasps, or into kissing him, or into nothing.

[Alexander] "Mmph," he says the first time she asks him to kiss her -- a sound rather like a protest, as though to say,

no. boob. nipple piercing. good. mmph.

because his mouth stays where it is, not so much agile or finessed on her breast as it is simply hungry, greedy, eager. The second time, though, he gasps away from her breast, unbends his spine and aligns to her, because they're nearly matched for height, because they're nearly perfectly matched when they're like this, stretched out on his sagging couch with its mismatched pillows of green and orange, his body to hers and his body inside hers and

their mouths meeting, obliterating the last of her syllables, eating them up like her very voice were a form of sustenance.

Her legs are wrapped around him. His hands let go the edge of the cushion and find her forearms, her palms, their fingers entwining for a moment. Then, down: following her arm to her shoulders, wrapping around her in complement: her lower half wrapped around him, his upper half wrapped around her, and the two of them moving together, grinding into each other over and over, kissing, until he pushes himself up on his forearms and starts going at her

just a little bit faster.

Their faces are still close together. Brows touching, his eyes closed. He mutters to her between kisses now -- senseless scraps of words, rambling little sentences he can't seem to contain; things like oh yeah and that's so good and work that hot little cunt on me baby, that's right and be a good little girl for me, that's it,

oh god,

just like that.

[Sinclair] In a way, Sinclair's voice is sustenance. Giver of rage, howler of sorrow, singer of histories. It feels her people in a different way than food-prey -- like the beast she hunted, like the one she ripped apart so she could share it with her pack and elder -- but it feeds them, nonetheless.

And this seems to feed her. She doesn't know if it gives Alex anything, fills him up in some way he needs or craves. But it feeds her, and she holds his head when they kiss, holds his body with her hand on his shoulderblade and her ankles crossed behind his lean back, letting out those gasping little whimpers into his mouth as he thrusts into her, panting, and sweating. The windows are closed. Their bodies run hot as it is.

One of those pillows gets kicked to the floor, nearly falls on the coffee table that is literally inches away from the cushions they're fucking on. Sinclair and Alex don't notice. This is another first for her, but she's not thinking about that right now. She's not thinking, really, at all. She's reduced to rhythms, to what he can do to her body with his body, to the barest words and phrases, like

"Harder," Sinclair says, her brow pulling tight, as she's pushing herself up on her elbow and holding him against her, leveraging herself against the cushions to ride back up against his cock, bouncing faster underneath him. And it might be the first time she's ever told him to fuck her harder, she can't fucking remember, she doesn't care, but when he rises up on his elbows she follows him. She holds herself up, too, back arched and hair falling straight down towards the upholstery, breasts

doing what they do best, when he fucks her like this.

[Alexander] For someone who runs his mouth as much as Alex does, he's remarkably closemouthed about his relationships, such as they were, and what they mean to him. He didn't gloat about the whole Marrick thing. Well, not for a long time, anyway, and not until she'd made such a fool of herself that he was really only adding finishing touches. He doesn't really gloat about Sinclair, either, though if she's friended him or follows him at all she knows that he puts up snapshots of them sometimes.

Never anything blackmail worthy. Or even very private. There's a snapshot of her grinning under Christ the Redeemer; another of the two of them a little higher up on the path, a little closer to the enormous stone god-man. There's another of her laughing as she eats bbq beef off a skewer in the streets of Rio. And there's a few snaps from her birthday -- caps from the short video he took while she blew out the 'candles'.

No nudie pics. Nothing scandalous, or even remotely readable as look at my latest conquest or look at yet another silly girl all hung up about me.

The pictures of him with various drunk girls in Rio have been taken down or put away somewhere unimportant. And, most tellingly in this web 2.0 age: his relationship status has changed.

That's all he says about it, though, if that can even be counted as speaking. And, well -- telling her, once, that he wouldn't mind too much if they got mated. They backpedaled from that one, though, and so fast it's a wonderful they didn't trip over their own feet. Other than that, all Sinclair really has to go by is how he told her at Islands once, let's see where it goes without dissecting everything all the time,

and the way he grins at her when she shows up,

and laughs when she's around,

and groans when she tells him, Harder.

Which is how he fucks her. Harder. Pushing up on his elbows, then on his hands as she rises up on her elbow. Fucking her athletically, energetically, until the old couch creaks in its hidden joints, until her hair arrowing straight down toward the cushions sways with it, and her breasts bounce with it, piercing winking in the indirect sunlight, and their bodies slap together as she holds onto him and moves against him and

makes him all but bite a kiss onto her mouth. Makes him moan against her, freely, unashamedly giving voice to what she's doing to him. Sometimes it's hard to remember that just over two months ago Sinclair had never done this before; that not even two months ago she pushed him away and told him you're hurting me! when he went too fast. Sometimes it's hard to remember just under three months ago this was not something he wanted.

And even now, all the time, it's hard for him to explain just why, or how, it went from that -- to this. Something he wants. Something he agreed to share only with her. Something that's, well,

sort of a craving, now.

[Sinclair] For a history-keeper and story-teller, Sinclair seems to have absolutely zero interest in ever asking Alex to talk about his relationships. His tattoos: she asked about those. She asked about the marks he made on his body, and why. She's told him about pretty much all of her own, now, though it remains to be seen if the colored beads on her earrings have any special significance. To her, at least.

Maybe if she were of another tribe, like the Fenrir she's often mistaken for, she might not put any stock at all in what's changed on Facebook. Who cares if some photos are taken down, or if others are up, or if he's told the social network that he's essentially off the market? What does it matter if the pictures he puts up of Sinclair are: here. look. she's pretty, and she's happy, and she was with me when she was happy and there's no caption bragging about her?

She's not the most perceptive person in the universe, but Sinclair knows Alex is as image-obsessed as any asshole of his caliber. It doesn't even matter if he cares about the opinions of the audience, it doesn't matter if they're important to him or not. It's about image. So she gets her Facebook feed and sees the changes he's made on his profile. And she remembers it.

There's that. And there's the way she's arching for him, making these little begging noises like she can barely fucking stand it. But she can stand it. She's strong enough for it, even though she's holding onto him as though she doesn't know what the fuck will happen to her if she lets go, if she isn't as close to him as possible, if he stops, if she doesn't come on him like this. The snake around her left thigh flexes where her leg wraps around his waist, the skin moving, the muscle underneath working.

She puts her hand on his cheek the next time she kisses him, her eyes closed, her mouth opening after she can't focus on kissing him any longer. She keeps her face very close to his, breathing against his cheek, a counterpoint of tenderness to the way they're fucking each other: athletically, hungrily, hard.

"I'm close," she whispers, and groans softly. "Oh, baby, give it to me."

Her words are straight off the script for a porno, unimaginative and overdone. But the way she says it, the way she says it when she's touching him and kissing him and then laying back down, sliding her hand down his neck and shoulder and back to his flank, to hold him inside her, to feel him as he fucks her. The way her voice sounds, the way she makes it seem like it can't just be his cock, can't just be his cum, can't just be anything temporal or tangible, makes it sound like she's in need of relief, in need of something he can give her.

The way she whimpers, and reaches down to touch herself, her breath going unsteady and staggered, her body writhing. The way she clutches suddenly at his lower back when it hits her, when she goes electric just like she did when he first pushed into her, only more, so much fucking more, opening her mouth and crying out, bucking her lean hips in short little jerks up on his cock.

The way she looks at him when she comes.

[Alexander] Maybe one could read something, too, in the way the filthy, porn-script little things he says to her taper off as they fuck faster, harder, more wildly, more needfully. That work that cunt for me, take that cock, yeah, take it like a hot little girl turns into ohs and yeahs and finally -- into nothing at all.

Which isn't to say he's quiet. He's not quiet. He's the opposite of quiet. He fills the confines of his tiny little apartment with groans and growls, moans, unmodulated little yells of pleasure when she moves a certain way or does something he likes or just -- looks the way she does when she's getting close. Moans the way she does, or whispers, or whimpers the way she does

when she's about to come.

"Oh god that's it," -- this is the first thing he's said for some time. It's one unpunctuated rush of a sentence, "yeah, that's it, come for me baby. I love watching you come. Fuck, yes. Oh, fuck. Oh -- "

his mouth catches hers. His eyes shut, his brow furrows, and he's quiet for once because he's not yelling into open air. He's moaning into her mouth, stark, wracked noises spilled into her mouth as his orgasm hits him just like that, rising up out of the blue to drag him under.

He comes inside her, which he's never actually done before: flexing against her, unfocused, thrusting in short, sharp instinctive strokes as though to pump his cum deeper into her; going until his groans take on an overwhelmed edge, until he's shuddering on every thrust, until their mouths fall apart so he can pant for breath, so he can collapse against her, gasping, heart racing.

He doesn't move. He doesn't speak, or draw away. He thinks for an incoherent moment that he might actually die, might actually fall apart into ash, if he tried to move right now.

So he doesn't. He stays where he is, in her arms and inside her, and every time her cunt clenches around him, every time he pulses inside her, he draws a ragged breath; lets it out in a soft groan.

[Sinclair] The couch shudders. They shudder. It's warm in here and they're warm in each other. Sinclair's kissing him for awhile after it's all said and done. Their hands linked for a little while, briefly, before he started to just... hold onto her. It felt good. She liked it, lacing their fingers like that, digits sliding in between one another. She liked the way he bowed over her after he let her hands go, the way his breath felt on her neck.

Truth be told, she likes everything about this.

This part, too: afterword, aftermath, aftershock. Not quite relaxing yet, because their bodies are still alight with the shuddering little impulses of orgasm and orgasm's remainders. But Sinclair is getting there: coming down, and yet holding him still. She rests her head against his head. She breathes, and he breathes with her, and both are uneven and unstable. Sinclair doesn't try to kiss him now. Just: breathing. Breathing is enough right now.

Breathing and sweat. And the feel of him inside her, different than any other time before. Most of it, she knows, is in how she thinks of it. In how she satisfies some instinctive desire this way, how it feels more real now, how it feels right. Her eyes drift close, her brow smoothing. She's content, now, and she wasn't when she came over. She's alright, now.

This is maybe what she needs, more than the sex or anything else. These moments when everything's broken down, blasted away, and simplified to instinctual realities. This is when she doesn't have any questions or answers, just the knowledge that this is right. Him inside her, just like this, recovering together.

"Don't go," she whispers, though he hasn't moved to push himself up or pull himself out. She rubs her face gently, lightly, against the side of his own. "Blow off the gym today. Stay with me. I'll work you out later. Just stay."

She'll take what he offers. He tells her to ask, as long as she's okay with the answer being no. Maybe that means she shouldn't bother asking him for anything unless she's okay with him refusing. But in Sinclair's world, that kind of setup doesn't make any sense. And it isn't fair. So who knows what she's thinking, or expecting. All she's put out there is what she's wanting.

Her lips find the corner of his mouth, press there. "Stay."

[Alexander] There's a faint stirring when she says don't go. It unfurls into something else -- a quick-quirking grin when she says i'll work you out later, and then a slow turn of his face toward hers, a slow press, a slow nuzzle, when she kisses the corner of his mouth.

"Mm," he says, which is -- more or less -- a sound of assent. Agreement. He shifts between her legs, against her body: lazily, a ripple of flexion going down his back, his flank, relaxing again.

Their bodies are tight and toned. So much muscle mass packed so dense: they're both hot, they both generate such heat. His back is slick with sweat. He should get up. Get some water. Get a towel or something. He doesn't feel like moving.

"Okay," he adds a little later, when the faculty of language has returned to him. He holds her a little closer, rolls to his side, the two of them squeezed onto his old sofa. "Okay."

[Sinclair] She means that, too. Can't let the body sag. Can't be lazy. Gotta stay fit, stay strong, stay fast. Missing an afternoon at the gym wouldn't be much, but it's about routine. It's about habits. It's about not letting yourself slack off. So she means it when she tells him she'll work him out later. Not go to the gym and spar with him, or invite others to fight with her, but put him through just as many paces. Maybe not in the apartment. It's very small, after all. Maybe she just meant that she'll fuck him until his bones turn to rubber. Maybe that counts as a workout.

Her legs relax a little around him, shift to lay more comfortably now that she's not using them to hold him against her body and ride back against him. Otherwise she doesn't move. She lazes, and thinks that as summer climbs up on the year it's going to be like this every time: lazy afterwards, too hot and sweaty to move, too hot to give a fuck about anything, too hot to do anything but stay.

That is, if she lives to see summer. That is, if they're still Together by then.

Sinclair rolls with him, stretches her legs out a bit, tangles with him. She keeps him inside of her, wraps around him to stay close on the narrow sofa and wraps around him to make sure his cock stays in her body, and she touches his face. No reason. Just... touches him, looking at him.

"You wanna take a nap?" she asks quietly after a bit, quirking a half-smile.

[Alexander] His eyes open; he blinks at her slowly, smiles at her slowly, held in her arms and her legs.

"Right here?" He shifts a little. Finds the pillow and stuffs it under his head. Gives her his arm to pillow her head on, close and warm and lazy while he considers her question, or offer, or suggestion. "I'm not sleepy," he decides eventually, "but I could totally sleep."

And then he leans forward. There's barely any space between them, and then there's none. He kisses her slowly, driftingly, and licks his lips when they part again.

"I want to stay inside you a little longer," he whispers.

[Sinclair] "Yeah," she answers in a whisper, to right here?

Her hand slides down his back, arm looped around him. Now it's the piercing through her bicep that glints in the sunlight filtering in through the blinds. The ankle with the tattoo of palms and constellations and poetry is resting against his calf, and she's tucking her right arm between their chests, laying her head down on his bicep, inhaling his scent and closing her eyes as she exhales.

By instinct, by scent or sound or the shift, she knows when he's leaning forward to kiss her. Sinclair's head turns gently to meet his mouth with her own. She wants to say something, and she doesn't know what that is, so she says nothing at all. She just... kisses him. It lingers for awhile, and she sighs softly again when it ends, opening her eyes.

They don't glint in the light. They glow a little, like there are bits of gold in the blue.

"I can always sleep," she says, with some wryness, lips curling. And tucks herself closer against him, as though she actually is smaller or weaker or anything. But she doesn't have to be smaller. Or weaker. Or anything beyond what she is, to want to curl against his chest and be held.

"Stay," Sinclair whispers again, in answer. In agreement. Her hand rests on his back, and her brow touches his left pectoral lightly as her eyes close again. Stay inside me. Stay here. Stay with me.

"Stay."

[Alexander] That makes him smile. "Okay," he says, and there's a hint of play in that. A hint of ritual, too.

Stay.
Okay.

His hand comes to her face briefly, then to the back of her head as she curls against him. He's not so large that she can all but disappear into his embrace; not so strong that the protectiveness inherent in this really means anything at all.

But -- he doesn't need to be bigger, or stronger, or anything beyond what he is to hold her like this. To want to hold her like this, and stay, and close his eyes, and nap in the early afternoon sun.

So he does. He kisses her again, her brow this time. She can hear him drawing a deep breath, letting it out: a content sigh. Then Alex closes his eyes. He doesn't sleep quite as instantaneously, nor as deeply as Sinclair does. Few people ever do. But he sleeps all the same, dropping into unconsciousness with a certain speed and surety that speaks of contentment. Of safety and warmth, of being fed, of having fucked himself into bodily exhaustion.

Of happiness, too. There's that.