weirdest morning ever.

[Alexander] Sunrise is at about 6:30am these days, which means Alexander's already up by the time Sinclair knocks, just before dawn. He's not only up, he's showered and gulped down his protein shake, and he's lacing on his running shoes to go for his morning run.

Gabbie, in contrast, is an inert lump on her bed, her covers pulled up over her head. First couple of weeks, she tried to get Alex to please be quiet in the early mornings. Please don't thump around. Please don't whistle while he puts his shoes on. Please don't slam the doors, please don't throw himself down on the bedsprings, please don't hawk and spit out the alley window.

She's given that up. It didn't help. She bought earplugs, or learned to bury her head in her pillow, or just ... got over it. Or maybe those are just pillows under her covers. Maybe she's at the Loft. With as much as the roommates of Room 4 interact, Alex would have no way of knowing or caring.

"Just a sec!" he yells at the closed door. He finishes tying his laces, gets up, grabs a sweatshirt and pulls it on over his track pants. His hair's mildly wet still when he looks out at Sinclair. It's possible they were in the showers at the same time, each unaware of the other.

"You look like shit," he comments: always one to say the right thing, Alex. "What's up?"

[Sinclair] They both have wet hair, though hers is dripping. She hasn't toweled it off, run a comb through it. No wonder it has those odd and unstyled waves to it sometimes when it's dry. People in Chicago have yet to see if Sinclair 'cleans up nice'. She's perfectly clean right now, blood and filth and makeup alike washed off, the last remaining wound on her bandaged and hidden under the thermal she has on. Usually there's a t-shirt over these longsleeved layers, but not this morning. She looks halfway there when it comes to getting ready for the day, like she should be pulling on another shirt, putting on socks and sneakers, maybe making herself look less like she's been up all night.

Sinclair looks over at the inert lump and can tell by the smell, or lack thereof, that it's made up of pillows. Gabriella isn't here, or she'd sense her breeding, smell her shampoo, sniff her out like prey. Gabriella's uneasy around Sinclair because of the way they first met at that nightclub, the Walker prowling around her and catching her scent. Most people are uneasy around Sinclair. It's hard not to be.

The moon is still in her phase, though hidden now because the sun keeps getting brighter by the minute. The gray of the morning at the docks is being burnt out of the Chicago sky. Art is barely cold. The Galliard at the threshhold looks pale, looks drawn, and looks exhausted. Something about her seems surreal, as though what little humanity there is to her is barely clinging to her athletic, frighteningly strong form.

The shit Alex says usually does not garner a reaction from Sinclair's temper. It doesn't this morning, either. She might, simply, agree, having recently seen herself in the mirror. She looks down at his shoes, freshly and tightly laced, then back up at his face. It isn't much of an incline; he only has three inches on her. Her eyes are opaque this morning, ethereal, and as ever, they do not look much deeper than the surface.

"You wanna go a round?" she asks.

[Alexander] This is probably the first time Alexander's seen Sinclair on the waning gibbous moon. For a kinsman and his supposed tribal elder, they don't have a whole lot of interaction. Alex doesn't really have a whole lot of interaction with anyone, apart from occasionally showing up to snark and/or break a head open.

He still lives here, though. In the Brotherhood, surrounded by kin and Garou, at the veritable center of Nation activity in this city. Must mean something. Might just mean he likes cheap food and cheap lodging.

However. Point is: he's likely never seen her in this moonphase, when she seems a waning shadow of herself. He's definitely never seen her after she was possessed, taken over, perverted, played like a puppet on its strings, and turned on her own people. Near-fatally in two cases. Fatally in one.

And Alexander, brash and abrasive as he is, isn't totally devoid of intelligent. He looks at her for a long moment, serious for once, though not still. He's almost never still. He's a bundle of reckless energy, his heart pounding blood through the veins popped on his muscles from all the constant workouts, his metabolism baking heat off of his compact, sturdy body. Right now, he's not shifting from foot to foot or jogging in place, though he might want to. He's just popping his knuckles one finger at a time, his dark eyes considering the Garou that's asking to go a round.

"Depends," he says. "You gonna kill me?"

[Sinclair] [WP: -3]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 4, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Sinclair] It's entirely possible that Alex has never seen Sinclair on a waxing gibbous moon, either. She's different then, a far cry from the way she looks now. Her skin all but glows. Her eyes are bright and clear. Even if she goes without sleep, there are no dark circles under her eyes. She's stronger, faster, and wiser. Her voice sounds like silver bells chiming. Her existence, for a few days, is poetry and battlecry, song and glory.

But on days like this, when the daylit sky hides the waning face of her auspice, it's a wonder she can get anything done at all. She's listless, her appetite falters, and her voice rasps rather than rings out. Her power in battle is sapped.

And yet.

All she does in response when he asks her if she's going to kill him is close her eyes for a moment. All she does is swallow, once, before opening her eyes and exhaling. Sinclair just shakes her head. "No. May I come in?"

[Alexander] "I thought you wanted to go a round," he says. But Alexander does step back, one hand still on the door, the other dropping from the frame. If she comes in, he turns to face her, letting the door swing shut behind her.

The room Alex shares with Gabbie is a study in contrasts. On one side, it's all tasteful, subtly expensive furnishings and upholstery and textures. On the other, it's drumkits and DVDs, porn, laptops, exercise gear peeking out from under the rumpled bed.

For what it's worth, though, Alexander's side of the room is meticulously clean. Not neat, but clean. There's no dust, no dirty laundry, no muddy shoes, no -- god forbid -- sticky sheets.

He grabs a bottle of water out of the closet. On second though, he tosses that to Sinclair, and gets a second one for himself.

[Sinclair] No one would be surprised that Sinclair snatches the water bottle out of the air the way she does, even as she's shuffling into the bedroom after him. She moves with agility and speed even when she's not fighting. Her reflexes are finely honed, more instinctive than attentive. Truth be told, Sinclair sometimes has trouble seeing things that are right in front of her face. All the same, when the full but room-temperature bottle flies towards her, she puts up a hand and catches it as though it's a softball.

She cracks her neck as the door closes, looking around, and then going to the window. "You mind if I open this?" she asks, setting the bottle on the sill. She doesn't open the water, but looks out on the alleyway with a deep frown. The conflicting scents in this room are driving her vaguely out of her mind.

On the one: fabric softener, textbooks, perfume, breeding.

On the other: Alex.

As for going a round: "I don't really feel like fighting anything right now."

[Alexander] "Go for it." The window. He cracks his bottle of water open, upending it to gulp. He's in track pants in deference to the weather, too cold for shorts. He's still in a sleeveless shirt, though, a sweatshirt out on his bed, ready to pull on.

And, "If you didn't wanna fight, why'd you come here looking for one?" Maybe he's disappointed.

[Sinclair] So the window opens, the lock flicked and the pane pushed upward with one smooth, effortless motion. The building may be old, but the renovations were careful. The windows don't stick. The windows don't leak air unless opened. Cool morning air rushes in, and Sinclair's hair drips water once, twice, onto the windowsill. She looks out and down, then over her shoulder at him. Her tattoos are covered but there's a slight bulge on her left arm, just under the distinct impression of the bar that pierces her flesh there, pressed against the thermal shirt.

That frown is still on her face, furrowing her brow, darkening her eyes. "I didn't say I was looking for a fight, Alex."

[Alexander] When he finishes drinking from the bottle, it's half gone. He screws the cap back on and puts it up on his bookshelf, right in front of Gargantuan Gangbang XVIII!!! and, jarringly enough, Fundamentals of Plasma Physics. His hand scuffs his hair into spikes and horns, and then he folds his arms over his chest, raising his eyebrows.

"Okay. So what'd you mean?"

[Sinclair] She is not paying attention to what is on his bookshelves or what is in his DVD cases, though it's debatable whether or not that means she's paying attention to him. Sinclair's eyes are faraway, inhuman, and there's none of that trademark eye makeup to ground her in her adopted persona. The fact that her rage is banked even under such a swollen moon does not even begin to chip away at the sense of being stalked, though the fact that it's daylight helps.

Maybe she makes his skin crawl when she looks over at him. Maybe on her best day she has a certain girl-next-door quality. Maybe it's odd, the questions she keeps asking. Permission to enter. Permission to alter.

And this, as her eyebrows tug together for a second. "Would you have sex with me?"

[Alexander] It's not an accident that Alexander is over by his bookshelf while Sinclair is at the window. He's as far from her as he can get without actually backing into a corner, without actually running out the door.

On the best of days Sinclair moves, breathes, talks, looks like a predator. On a morning like this, Alexander's admittedly defective sense of self preservation is all but shouting at him to get out, get away, get anywhere but here.

It's not that she's the only woman -- or man, or wolf, or whateverthefuck -- in town that makes him nervous. That makes him feel somehow threatened. A lot of people do that. Hell, just about everyone makes Alexander feel threatened, insecure; makes him feel like he needs to defend himself and his pride. He reacts by belittling them. By tearing at them, chipping away at their calm, making them angry, making them hurt, making them lustful; anything to destroy their equilibrium and set himself above them.

It's that with Sinclair, he's way out of his depth. He's out of his depth and he knows it.

There's a long silence. Then he raises his hand, scratches at his jaw, refolds it across his chest.

"Are you asking me or telling me?"

[Sinclair] No one Alex is going to be talking to would ever describe Sinclair as empathetic, as caring, as nurturing. There are far more people who would use words like brutal, like ferocious, like dangerous when talking about her. Word has gotten around that she was gone for weeks awhile ago because she was tainted by the Wyrm. Word has not had time yet to get around that last night she killed one of her own because the Wyrm got in again. She has spoken up so that everyone who attended the Gathering for the Departed over Art's grave would know her part in his death.

Word will get around. Garou will pull their Kin back from her like they shield children from drunken strangers on the street. It's entirely possible that the Coltranes will ask her to leave, or that the Grand Elder will inform her that she is not to be around anyone weaker than she is until she is damn sure she can control herself. Sinclair has no idea what is going to happen, whether she'll be punished at all or simply murmured about. She has no idea what her new Alpha is going to think when he finds out what happened.

Right now she doesn't care. She should be hungry and she's not. She should be thirsty and she isn't. She should be exhausted, want nothing more than sleep, but she can't even close her eyes to do more than blink.

Sinclair frowns. Another day, she might lash out. As it is, she turns around, resting her back against the edge of the desk, crosses her arms over her chest, and stares at him. "What did it sound like?"

[Alexander] Alex doesn't answer that directly. Another short silence passes. Then: "What's going on with you, Sinclair?"

He doesn't bother to add: you're acting strange. He certainly doesn't say: you're scaring me. It's in the air, though, and in the way he folds his arms as though this might protect his vital organs; and in the way his eyes watch her unwaveringly, barely even blinking.

[Sinclair] [Perception + 'Empathy']
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 1, 4 (Botch x 1 at target 6)

[Sinclair] That he is unnerved by her, perhaps even frightened by her, passes completely by Sinclair's radar without causing so much as a flicker in her awareness. She is trying, watching him, to see what he's thinking, maybe even what he's feeling. Maybe she just sees what she wants to see, even if what she wants to see makes her hate herself a little. Or hate the wanting. It's all intertwined, right now.

She can tell that he's uneasy. She can't tell why. She hears the question, and her shoulders round downward. She thinks it matters.

"I just had a bad night," she says flatly, though without rancor or even irritation. She just sounds... numb. It doesn't last. She pushes away from the desk and starts to head towards the door, leaving the bottle of water still unopened on the windowsill. Sinclair doesn't leave behind an apology, or explain why she's leaving. She just moves to do so.

[Alexander] "No, wait. Hold on a second."

He says this not immediately, but when she's almost at the door. It's not that long of a pause in the long run. A few seconds. A few seconds' worth of indecision, and then something like a decision made. A stall, anyway. He waits to see if she'll stop, and, if she does, if she'll turn and look at him again.

If she does, his jaw works briefly. He can still taste the remnants of his protein shake. Strawberries, bananas, raspberries, blueberries, ice, milk, yogurt, three eggs, blend. He wonders what Sinclair would taste like; he wonders if she'll taste like blood, and the thought turns his stomach so he pushes it aside.

He could ask her: why me.
He could ask her: what happened.
He could ask her: are you all right.

What he does ask her: "Are you gonna try to claim me?"

[Sinclair] Pride used to be a problem for Sinclair. Pride, overconfidence, an unwavering and misplaced trust in her own abilities and her superiority to others. Pride and rage, had she either at the moment, would have her whipping around to shatter Alex's jaw for telling her to wait when she is on her way out, for doing anything but politely requesting her continued presence. But of all the deadly sins, pride is not one Sinclair currently has to wrestle with, and as it is considered the father of all the others, she is perhaps as virtuous right now as she is ever going to get.

That is to say: not very.

She does turn. She does look back at him, half-twisted. Her eyes watching him across and past her shoulder look all the more predatory for her positioning, between him and the door, neither facing him nor retreating from him.

One eyebrow quirks upward at the question. She doesn't laugh, as she might have during summer in Grant Park or sitting in the common room. She turns around fully now, head tipping to one side. "Lawfully and rightly, you are your brother's. But as far as the Garou in this city are concerned, as long as you are within the protectorate of this sept, you are already under my claim. I currently represent our tribe to Maelstrom, so for all intents and purposes, I wouldn't need to 'try' to claim you."

There's a beat, a blink. It's slow, almost lazy. It makes her seem chilling, but truth be told she's just tired. "But that's not what you meant."

She turns to the side, takes a few steps, and sits down on the stool of his trap set. Her knees are akimbo, her back rounded, her elbows on her thighs. It's the first thing she's done without permission since entering. Since before entering. "I'm not Marrick, Alex. I think the chances of my becoming infatuated with you are next to nil. And the chances of me rolling up to Aaron and tittering about 'protecting' you and having your short-ass babies --" the disdain she has for Marrick's attempted challenge and the reasoning behind it bleeds through even now, obvious and dripping, "-- are utterly nonexistent.

"So in short," she concludes quietly, sounding as drained as she looks, blinking slowly as she exhales and shakes her head, "no. I'm not."

[Alexander] Short-ass babies makes Alex snort a laugh, somewhere between surprised and offended. The corner of his mouth hooks up, showing an edge of teeth, incisor. He wraps his arms farther around himself, each hand scratching the opposite shoulder, and then finally, finally lets both drop.

UCF, for the university of central florida, glares out from the middle of his chest. That's not where he went, but that's the sort of school people might expect Alexander Vaughn to have gone to. If he wore his alma mater's shirt, people would faint the fuck away.

"You can have as many of my shortass badass babies as you want if you pay for the favor," he retorts, smirking. Then he grows serious. "But I don't want to be mated to you. Or anyone."

She knows that. She just said: no. She's not looking for that.

Another pause.

"You still offering?"

[Sinclair] Her response is about as bland as anything else she's said since she showed up here. Or done. "I wasn't offering anything to begin with."

[Alexander] Alex's temper flares at that. "Sinclair, if you wanna be a bitch about this, find yourself another kinsman to use, all right?"

[Sinclair] The fact that she rises to her feet slowly makes it, somehow, worse. The fact that she moves slowly over to him when it doesn't take someone of half his intellect to know that she could be there in an instant makes it worse. It's disturbing that she moves with so much grace, that even when exhausted there's an effortless flow to her every movement. It's inhuman.

But then: that should be obvious.

Sinclair's hair has stopped dripping but is still wet. The shoulders of her gray shirt are black from water. It sticks to her shoulderblades, to her clavicles. The red-beaded ring in her right ear and the bar through her cartillage above gleam; a drop of water hangs to one of the colored beads on the tiny rings in her left ear. His sense of smell isn't as good as hers; he can still smell shampoo, soap, the laundry detergent they use here and buy in bulk, the mint of her toothpaste. Because she gets that close. She steps into his space, leaves perhaps an inch between their chests, stares at him.

"Who?" she asks with level softness, tipping her head to the side. "Who do you suggest, Alex? Thornton?"

There might have been a list of male kinsmen in the city to follow that one name, spoken with obvious disbelief. She doesn't even mention the men who work at the Brotherhood. Danny. Joaquin.

Her head straightens again. "Maybe a human?" A beat. "How many people do you think are out there that aren't terrified of me?"

She doesn't wait for an answer to a question that doesn't need to even be asked. This is a werewolf that even other werewolves watch closely, carefully, because of what she might do. Because of what she is. She starts to pull away, shoulders rolling back, spine straightening. "I wasn't 'offering' anything because I have nothing to give right now," she says, her voice thick and her teeth on edge. "But I need to feel something other than what I do right now, and it's either this or putting my hand in the fire."

So she does not lose control, again, and what little she has left, Sinclair stops there, breathes out in a rush. "I am going to use you. But that's why I asked if you would. And all you had to do was say no."

[Alexander] As she closes on him, Alexander stands straighter and straighter, every muscle in his body tensing so he doesn't simply

break and run. Lash out in mindless, terrified aggression. One or the other.

They're an inch away, and he's holding himself so stiffly that she can see the veins bulging in his biceps, his forearms, his clenched fists. He listens to her, and as he does his breathing steps up, grows heavy and audible with something like -- what? Outrage? Fear? Want? It's all rolled into one. This is why the transaction between kinfolk and Garoukind has persisted for millennia, for eons, since the dawn of wolves and men. For the same reason the wolves that stalked the dark became the dogs that guarded the fire, so to the men that fed the wolves became the mates that warmed their beds. There's a deadly loathing, fear and attraction on all sides. It's thick in this room, as thick as the smell of blood after a fight, adrenaline after the rush.

Alexander doesn't speak for seconds after she's begun to pull away. When he does, his pulse is hammering so hard the edges of his vision darken with it in waves.

"Find yourself another kinsman to use," he repeats.

[Sinclair]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6) [WP]

[Sinclair] He does not remember what happened after he got so drunk in the common room with her that he blacked out and muttered incoherent, incorrect math and let his head loll back. Sinclair did not take him to the hospital to be treated for alcohol poisoning but slung his arm around her shoulders and half-dragged him to this room, laid him in bed with his shoes off and the covers on. He does not know that she used what little knowledge she has of first aid to make sure he wasn't going to die in his sleep or choke on his own vomit, and he does not know that she

gave a shit.

When she's stronger, Sinclair maintains a strong facade. That predatory slide of her steps, the edge in her eyes, the threat in her voice: it's all natural to her, true, but she emphasizes it. She does anything she can to limit how much people think she cares, to limit how much they can expect from her, because otherwise she would spend all of her time worrying over the young woman who occasionally sleeps in the other bed in this room, or cleaning up Kate post-battle and holding her as she cries in terror.

The last thing Sinclair wants is to be weak. The last thing she wants is the exhaustion that comes from taking care of others. And so the one thing she has learned to lie about is how much she does care about the comfort and safety of those around her. She starves herself of what it wants most because she cannot stand to think of what will become of her if she feeds it, instead.

Last night, though, she was weak. Brutally, lethally weak. It didn't matter how quickly she killed one of the shadowmen, how ruthlessly she hunted the last one down after the battle. What mattered last night was that when it came right down to it, she couldn't resist. She came so close. And she couldn't stop it. The last thing she wants is to be weak; at the moment, that is what she believes she is. She is losing her ability to care how weak she seems, how desperate she might appear.

She knows he's angry. And scared. And... something else.

Truth be told, she could force him. Or persuade him.

Truth be told, she doesn't want to have to.

"I'm sorry," she says, and steps back. Six inches, now. Then twelve. She moves back until there's nearly three feet between them, til she's nearly across the room again, and he has room to breathe. Her eyes don't leave him, though, which isn't much comfort. Then, suddenly, she does. She looks at the chair, the stool, the bed, looks back at him, her head and gaze flicking all over before returning to Alex. "Can I just... stay, instead?"

[Alexander] As Sinclair steps back, as the air in Alexander's immediate vicinity becomes breathable again, he lets out a long breath, slowly so she doesn't hear it. It doesn't matter; she can see it anyway in the deflation of his chest, the way the letters UCF move over his hard, toned, meticulously maintained body.

He sits down. There's no chair near him, no stool, no bed, so he just sits on a shelf, bending forward so he doesn't gouge his back open on the next higher one. He rubs his palms on his thighs, the soft, faintly sheening material of his track pants whispering under his hands.

"Yeah," he says, after a pause to think. "You can crash on my bed if you want."

He watches her move, if she does. Alexander's not sleeping on the Brotherhood's motel sheets. He has his own, though they're hardly luxury: plain, coarse, 200-thread count cotton, so rough-spun it's practically canvas. They're dark blue. They smell like him, and the two or three showers he takes a day. Once before heading out. Once after his morning workout. Once after his evening.

There are posters up over the long side of his bed, mostly half-naked women in provocative poses, most of which he probably has up purely to annoy his roommate. Over the headboard, he's taped up a whole bunch of pictures, most of them from the pre-facebook era: him and his friends, a bunch of young men and women in their early-20s, college age. There's a few of him and his brother. In most of them, Alex's arm is around his twin's neck, but it lacks the sort of asshole aggression masqueraded as camaraderie of so many of his forcible embraces. At least in pictures, Alexander has the bigger grin, the more extroverted body language, somewhere between protective and aggressive. In person, his twin is the one with the Rage, which, in the end, makes all the difference.

Cluttered on his nightstand are books and clock radios and cell phones and mp3 players. There's laptop on the floor, open, but dark. It looks like it might've been tossed there two seconds before Alexander fell asleep the night before.

"I was going to go for a run," he adds after a while. "You want me to come back after?" Beat. "Or just stay?"

[Sinclair] Her bed is just a couple of doors down. Her sheets are not rough, her comforter is thick, her bed smells like her. The things she knows are nearby, the things that are familiar. The thought of that bed, right now, makes her stomach turn. The thought of Joey on the other bed, or walking into the room at all, makes her vaguely dizzy. The thought of Joey and Charlie comforting each other makes her want to vomit. The thought of how Charlie looked at her at the Gathering, how he looked at her after he healed her in the alleyway, make her want to faint.

If she's bothered by the posters or interested in the photographs, it doesn't show in the passing gaze she gives it all as she turns around and goes to the bed he says she can crash on. Sinclair isn't rushing to sleep, and she isn't flopping onto his bed and losing consciousness instantly. She glances at Alexander and Aaron, the names making her think of conqueror and priest, respectively, and the way Alex stands with his twin.

She gives more attention to the laptop, as though by habit, checking out what kind it is, how new it is, but even that is, ultimately, a passing glance.

Alex is talking, and Sinclair is taking her shirt off. The bra she has on underneath is pale pink, is getting worn out, and is dedicated to her spirit and flesh. It's cotton. Very likely, the band of it across her upper back is not what garners the most notice. Most of the lower half of Sinclair's back is covered in carefully etched, delicate scarification, a vast work of thin white lines rather than thick, bumpy tissue. If the image could be said to 'be' anything, it could be compared to gates, all scrollwork and leaves and flowers. It looks like there are even a couple of birds. It must have taken hours. It must have hurt like hell. It is, in a disturbing and primitive, ancient way... beautiful.

There's gauze around her upper left arm, underneath the bar that pierces her skin twice, mostly covering the spikes tattooed there. Blood has started to seep through, though just a few drops. Kenneth, Regina, and Colfax remain on her right bicep, names scrawled into her skin for memory or regret or whatever it is. The quartered circle on the back of her neck peeks through the tight, wet locks of her hair.

She does not drop her shirt. She folds it, even though it's damp, and sets it on the foot of the bed.

Reaching back to unclasp her bra, she hears him ask if she wants him to come back after. Or just stay. Her hands stop for a second, then continue deftly filcking the hooks out of their eyes.

"...I don't want to be alone," she says, her voice low. "But I also don't want you to do anything because you think I might hurt you if you don't." There's tension there. Frustration. She can't hide it, and she doesn't try. "So yes. I want you to stay. But if you don't want to, I'm not going to get all butthurt and angry."

[Alexander] One might expect a man like Alexander to be covered in tattoos. To be careless and filthy, to smoke, to drink too much all the time, to go unshowered, to let time and misuse mark his body. But he's not. Apart from a few tattoos on his arm -- names, coincidentally, women's names -- and a few nights binge-drinking, Alex treats his body like a goddamn shrine. He keeps his room clean so he doesn't live in squalor. He's never once smoked a cigarette, and he's smoked a joint only a few times. He sleeps at ten p.m. on the dot and wakes at six without an alarm. He bathes more than regularly. He works out near-obsessively, carving perfection out of a body that, by nature, is perhaps only average at best. Average height. Average weight. Average strength.

He looks away when Sinclair starts to undress, but not before he sees the intricate scarification; the bar through her arm. It vaguely appalls him. He comes forward as she's folding her shirt, picking his sweatshirt off the bed and pulling it on.

"I'm gonna go for a quick run," he says. He doesn't have to explain why. She gave him the option not to. He explains anyway, "I've been doing it so long I don't feel right if I don't break a sweat first thing in the morning. I'll feel clammed up and bottled up and ... it'll just make me more of an ass." Pause. "I'll be back in, like, twenty."

[Sinclair] She doesn't look at him. She removes her bra, puts it on top of her shirt, unbuttons and unzips her jeans. Her underwear is plain white cotton; there is a gleaming steel ring through her right nipple. There's ink on her left hip, and it looks like text, but her panties obscure it.

Sinclair drinks, but it's never too much because her body heals the damage done in seconds. Sinclair has smoked weed, cigarettes, but the same holds true: it cannot hurt her. It cannot affect her for more than a few moments at best, hours if she really tries to allow it to do so. Her skin is soft, and Gaia only knows what work it took to leave a scar on that body that didn't come from battle. She is adorned with titanium, steel, and black ink. Muscle moves under her skin, taut and thoughtless. Her stomach is flat. Her arms are toned. She burns through more calories just existing than he will on the run he's about to take.

She's strong because she fights, regularly, against more than weights or machines. She fights for her life, for the lives of packmates and comrades, for honor, for glory, to save the goddamn world that doesn't seem to want to be saved. Sinclair's body is a weapon.

And: she treats it like a shrine. But one that may be given to a different god than his, honed for another kind of worship.

Her jeans drop, and she folds them as well, sets them aside as he explains why he's going for a run even though she wants to stay here, wants to not be alone, wants, specifcally, for him to stay. She didn't explain why, hasn't said anything but that she had a bad night -- and there is the gauze, her blood coming through, but that's all, so it couldn't have been bad because of injury -- but he does.

When he says that if he doesn't go it'll just make him more of an ass, she looks over at him. She cannot tell that he looked away, at first, and cannot tell that he was appalled by the sight of her. She just nods, and pulls her panties off her hips, down her thighs. These she doesn't bother to fold; she sets them on top of the stack of clothes she's made at the foot of his bed, and

the tattoo on her hip is script of some kind, two lines of it, but she's

getting under the covers now, wordless, and closing her eyes.

[Alexander] Alexander misses the nipple ring, actually, which would have turned him on; he misses the text on her hip, which would have made him curious. He misses the color of her underwear and the tone of her body, the way she looks at him, because he hasn't looked back at her since. Maybe it's some errant, long-dead shred of chivalry twitching. Maybe it's something closer to survival instinct; self-preservation.

His sweatshirt is loose, a zip-up hoodie that he pulls on like it's a pullover. He flips the hood up while she's getting under the covers, and he's heading out the door, and he pauses a moment right at the doorway and then makes up his mind and flicks the light off.

Then he shuts the door behind him. She can hear his footsteps thundering down the stairs a little later, making enough noise for a dozen men.

--

He doesn't run for very long, but he runs hard and he runs far. Alexander keeps a pace a lot faster than most people jog; he keeps a pace close to what some people sprint. The pavement peels away beneath his feet. He sweats straight through his sweatshirt. He pounds down to the lake's edge, follows it for a good two miles before turning around and coming back.

The back door of the Brotherhood bangs open again twenty-two minutes later. It's not quite 6:45am, and most the residents are still asleep.

--

When he comes back to his room he's showered again, a quick, soapless dousing that blasted the sweat and the smell of morning from his body. A towel around his waist, his sweaty clothes balled up in his hand, he comes back into his room expecting to find her asleep.

She's not.

The window's still open, though, and there's light in the sky now. It's twenty minutes past dawn. He doesn't know what Sinclair did last night; he has the wits to assume she was in a fight, and someone died. Someone important. Maybe the fucking love of her life; who knows? He doesn't know that Sinclair thinks the Sept might turn on her, punish her, run her out for being twice taken by the Wyrm. He doesn't know why she doesn't want to be alone and he doesn't know

why him.

His clothes hit his cheap Ikea folding hamper with a muffled whumpf. He gets a fresh pair of boxers out of his dresser, and he's awkward for a moment before undoing his towel and stepping into his underwear. It's black striped in grey. Then he tosses his towel into the hamper too. There's another beat of hesitation before he comes over to sit on the edge of his bed, leaning his elbows on his knees to scuff his newly wet hair up into spikes again.

"You wanna tell me what happened?"

[Sinclair] Enough noise for a dozen men, all of them bigger than he is, as though the racket he makes will compensate for something he doesn't have, as though the ability to piss others off makes him stronger. Sinclair gets it. She understands it because, at least to her, it makes some sort of sense. Another person -- another woman -- might decide to make him and his insecurities her pet project. Change him. Make him feel better about himself so he'll shut up and stop bothering people so much.

Sinclair could care less how much noise he makes on the steps, or with his drums, or how many people he pisses off. She's never threatened anyone lest they lay a hand on 'her kin'. She's never thought about purchasing his sperm on GW.net and knocking herself up with a turkey baster. Right now, she could be looking at his photographs, could be looking over his bookshelf, could be rifling through his room and ignoring locks with a gift.

Yet she barely even moves. She slips under the sheet, the blanket or blankets, and she takes up most of the bed by lying in the middle rather than expectantly off to one side. She lies on her back, stares at the ceiling.

Awhile after he leaves, she rolls onto her right side, back to the wall, and sniffs slightly. She sniffs a second time, a third, animalistic and curious, then winds under the covers completely, body curling as she picks up traces of his scent from the pillow and the sheets. When she is done, or satisfied, or something, she does rifle through a drawer somewhere, but she's just looking for a comb. If she finds one, she combs her hair. If she doesn't, she uses her fingers.

Either way, about twenty-five minutes later, Alex comes back into his room and she is sitting up in his bed rather than sleeping in it, her knees up and her arms wrapped around them, her chin on the backs of her forearms. Her hair is drying. She does not turn her eyes away because he's in a towel. She looks at him with interest, though being the object of interest to someone like Sinclair isn't necessarily a slow stroke to the ego or even a comfortable situation to be in. She watches him get his boxers, watches him until she recognizes the awkward hesitance in his frame.

She looks away so he can drop his towel and put on his underwear. She looks at her clothes at the foot of his bed, feels his sheets against her bare skin. She doesn't say anything until he comes over, sits, and asks her what he does.

There's a long silence between question and answer.

"You remember that e-mail I sent out?" she asks, waits a moment, but even if he doesn't acknowledge yes or no, she goes on: "I was tainted, awhile ago. The Wyrm came at me in a dream and... it got in. It took me days to realize what had happened. Took me weeks to admit it and let someone cleanse me."

She sniffs, reaches up, and rubs the heel of her hand against her forehead. She stares at the foot of his bed, face blank, eyes washed out, voice distant. "Last night I was fighting with some others -- Joey, actually, and Charlie, and Arthur -- and... it was..."

Sinclair huffs out a breath. She's already told this story once. Lived it once. She closes her eyes. "I bit one of the things that attacked us in half. Literally. Just... gone in one strike. I was fucking amazing." There's no ego in this, strangely. No pride. Her eyes open. "The thing is, I think that's why the last one alive picked me. Because I could do that. Next thing I knew, it was... inside me, somehow."

There's another silence. Not quite as long as the last one, though. "And it used me."

Silence. Again.

"Art's Gathering was about an hour ago," she all but whispers. "Joey and Charlie have battlescars from what I did to them."

[Alexander] What do you say to that?

That sucks. It wasn't your fault. Don't feel bad. I'm sure Arthur forgave you. I'm sure he'll never forgive you. It is your fault. Good job there, Sinclair. Epic. fucking. fail.

If there's anything to say to that, Alex doesn't know what it is. So he keeps his mouth shut. He does look at her, though; watches her while she speaks, while her eyes close and open again. Sinclair's eyes don't match the rest of her. They're too soft. Baby blue. Sometimes he thinks Sinclair is the most viciously feral Garou he knows; vicious and feral in a way that's not quite within even the rules that other Garou seem to live by. She's far and away not the only one that he looks at and thinks, Garou. Definitely. But sometimes he thinks it's impossible not to look at her and think: animal. Beast. Predator.

When she's finished he's silent. After a while he straightens up. Muscle's packed on his medium frame so tight and thick that there isn't even a shadow of his ribs left. There's very little padding of subdermal fat, either. The definition in his back and his arms is absolute and clear when he pushes himself back to sit with his back to the wall, under his posters of random anonymous hot women.

"They gonna come after you, do you think?"

[Sinclair] Tonight Sinclair killed three Garou.

Three.

An Ahroun, a Rotagar, and a Theurge who has done more in a few short months than some others of his auspice have done in years spent in this city. All of them fell before her, in a matter of seconds. She does not describe what she remembers of those moments after the shadow-thing possessed her, because she is afraid she would sound excited. She is afraid that she will scare him. Two of the Garou were lucky enough to get a second chance. One of them already got his.

Sinclair is Garou, definitely. Sinclair is animal, beast, and predator. Sinclair is, apparently, just as dangerous to her own kind as she is to the Wyrmlings she's supposed to be using her energy and prowess on. Alex has yet to see her throw herself into battle. He's seen her scuffle, no more. And right now, telling him what really happened last night, she's glad of that.

Those misplaced eyes, that should belong to a nice girl from Kansas and not the monster waiting for winter to truly hit Chicago, follow him as he unfurls slightly, leaning back. They track the motion, and then the body that stills against the wall. She thinks for a moment, looking at the middle of his chest, then shakes her head.

"I think if they were going to do that, they wouldn't have let me leave the Gathering," she says finally. "But I think... they have to do something. I just don't know what it's going to be."

As though that is the conclusion of the matter, Sinclair leans back. She would push her legs down, but his body is in the way. So all she does is lay back down, knees bent all the same, the blankets still gathered around her waist where they were when she sat up, curled up, and held herself to her knees. She turns her head, blinks slowly, almost blearily, looks down her chest and past her thigh and across the blankets at him.

"What do you do all day, anyway?"

[Alexander] Alexander makes a scoffing sort of laugh as Sinclair lays down. It's mostly bravado. "Well," he says, "at least I won't have to hustle you out of town."

Now she's horizontal, and he's still sitting up. They look at each other at an angle, across the expanse of her torso, his rather rumpled bed. The bit of metal through her nipple catches the light this time, catches his eye. He looks at it for a moment before returning his eyes to her face.

"What the hell do you care?" It's a sort of reflexive snark. He doesn't seem to mean much by it. A hand reaches up, scratches at his shoulder, the edge of his neck. Drops again. "I usually run 45 minutes or so first thing outta bed. Then I work out down at Tribull for maybe 2 hours. Spar if someone's there to spar with. I run back here. Take a shower. Then it's like 10 o'clock, and I bum around, eat lunch, nap, play my drums. 'round 4pm I go down to Tribull again, get back around 7. Shower. Eat. Bum around. Sleep.

"If you're asking how I earn my keep, there's an amateur MMA circuit in town. Fights every Saturday for my weight class. Few hundred bucks a pop if you win, and I don't lose much. Plus I freelance for online mags. Short fiction, if you can believe it. Should probably get a gig playing drums. That one pretty boy Coggie was looking for bandmates a while back; maybe I shoulda signed up.

"He's dead too now, isn't he? What happens to his band?"

Alex doesn't really want or need an answer to that. He leans over, plucks his half-finished water off the shelf, and drinks.

[Sinclair] "I wasn't asking how you earn your keep," Sinclair says loosely, but only after he's finished chattering. That's about all she has to say. She spoke her piece at Arthur's Gathering. She spoke a great deal earlier, before he left -- and she notes the difference between the forty-five minutes he usually runs and the twenty he was gone today -- and she spoke just recently about what happened last night. She does not have very many words left in her.

So she just listens. And she doesn't comment on the moment he spends looking at the steel that caught his eye. She doesn't rise to the kneerjerk question about what she cares what he does all day. She doesn't tell him: I know damn well when you play your drums, and she doesn't ask him if the short fiction he writes for online magazines is porn or not. It's possible that the answer to his snarking question is actually: I don't. I just want you to talk so I don't have to.

It's possible that she simply wants to know, too.

Sinclair huffs out a breath when he asks about the band, but in the end, all she says is that: she wasn't asking him how he earns his money. She does reach out, as he's leaning over, and puts her hand on his abdomen. As a gesture, it's sudden, and it's thoughtless, but it isn't graceless.

Nor careless.

Sinclair, a moment later, seems slightly surprised to find his skin under her palm.

"I like your body," she says mildly, almost curiously.

[Alexander] Her hand so suddenly on his body makes him jump; to cover it, he doesn't so much as move it as he sits back, looking down at her hand on his stomach for a moment before he follows her arm back to her eyes.

"Yeah, a lotta girls do." There's a sort of deliberate jadedness to this, which is as much bravado as anything. Another swig out of his bottle empties it, and he caps it before tossing it out into the middle of the room for Gabbie to step on and slip on when she finally gets back. "She-wolves too, I guess."

[Sinclair] "That's not why you make it like this," she says, and keeps her hand where it is. Her palm is feverishly, frighteningly warm. It's searing against the sensitive skin of his torso, what's so often called the soft underbelly whether it's soft or not. She does not trace his muscles. She does not run her hand upward, or down between his legs. She looks at his tan through her paler fingers.

[Alexander] His eyelids flicker for an instant, not quite a blink. He doesn't look away as he says, "No, it's not."

[Sinclair] At that confirmation, she doesn't ask what his real reason is. She knows, has guessed, or just doesn't care. There's very little she cares about this morning, coming off of battle, off of a hunt, off of a ritual, off of exhausting herself further just to figure out that she was scaring the shit out of him and pissing him off. Sinclair goes on staring at the juxtaposition of her deceptively slender hand, her black fingernails, and his stomach. Her thumb sweeps once, brushes over the thin and shower-fluffed trail of hair below his navel.

Then she draws her hand back, and now that he's moved, stretches her legs out under the covers. Her back is to the wall. Her hands are between her knees, shoulders slightly hunched, breasts together, cheek to pillow. And, as though she can't stand more than a pause of silence, she ends up saying: "I'm sorry for saying I was going to use you."

[Alexander] The air seems a little easier to breathe when Sinclair's drawn her hand away. At the same time, paradoxically, his skin feels oddly bare and cold.

He keeps looking at her. The topography of his bed changes: the hill of her knees going down, her body stretching out. He's moved, but her feet still end up abutting the side of his right leg -- at least until he bends his legs up enough to give her feet room to pass under, like a steamer under a bridge.

"Was it the truth?"

[Sinclair] "I don't know."

Which isn't the truth, either. She closes her eyes for a moment, and despite the tattoos, the blood on the gauze, the metal glinting here and there, her face is -- as always -- untouched. When the rest of her is covered it's possible to create some thin illusion that she is not what she is, that she has never marked herself with clay or paint or blood or bitten creatures in half or killed her comrades or tried to drag kinfolk into pocket realms of the umbra ruled by the Wyrm.

She may be one of those girls who, when asleep, looks like an angel. But then she opens her eyes, and it never gets that far. She doesn't look that peaceful.

"I don't think so."

[Alexander] He watches her until she's found her final answer. Then he looks away, between his knees, at the empty bed and ridiculously neat, girly shit on the other side of the room.

"If it was the truth, then you shouldn't've apologized for it. But since it wasn't, apology accepted, and all that."

He slouches a little bit lower. Drops his hand to his stomach, not too far from where hers momentarily lay. He's still tanned from a faraway Florida summer. His body is smooth and nearly hairless, except for the forearms, the knees and calves, the trail down from his navel. His body hair is lighter than his hair, and much finer. As his hair dries, it nearly stands on end, cut short enough to bristle.

"Not sure why it even pissed me off, really. It's not like I haven't done my fair share of using."

[Sinclair] Much of this conversation would not be happening if Sinclair were not so utterly sapped of anything resembling temper or backbone. None of it would be happening if what happened last night had not happened. A half-dozen times by now she would have snapped at him, hit him, thrown him against a wall or through the window or to the floor, or taken herself out of the room just to keep herself from killing him.

She watches him, listens to him, which she might not normally do. She has her theories on why it pissed him off. She's too tired, too worn out, to comment on it, risk a flareup of his temper, which she cannot deal with right now. Sinclair keeps her mouth shut because if he fights with her, she does not have it in her to stop herself from hurting him.

Perhaps badly.

That, and something simpler: she simply does not want to fight with him. Argue. Snap and snipe with him. She never has, though on several occasions she has wanted to see what he is like in a fight. But she has no healing talens left to mend him afterward. She has no self-control left after last night. She is not going to suggest they beat the shit out of each other as a replacement for his workout at Tribull.

"Do you want me to leave?" she asks instead, after awhile, after a long emptiness between his musing on why he got pissed off and this offer to just leave him alone. She doesn't ask because she thinks the answer is yes. She asks because she genuinely doesn't know. "You don't... seem really comfortable with me here. And this is your te--"

A beat.

"Room."

[Alexander] Once again, he needs to think about that. She's right, he's not comfortable with her here. Like this. He's not comfortable because she's so different from her normal self that it's hard for him to be his normal self. It's hard for him to snark at her, to be reckless and stupid, to bang on his drums, to pick fights with Garou, to shout through the door at her and try to pwn her face on the Xbox and...

all the other immature, stupid ways he has of interacting with Garou. Or people.

"No," he decides finally. Something about what he says next makes him wince a little. "I don't mind if you stay."

He brings his hands up to his face, then. Scrubs for a moment. Drops them.

"But I don't know how long you want me to stay with you. Or how to make you okay."

That makes him wince more.

[Sinclair] I don't mind if you stay seems like it's good enough. She doesn't move to get up, yank her clothes on, and get out because he doesn't say specifically that he doesn't want this, or wants that. It is enough that he simply doesn't mind if she stays. So she stays, watches, and does not offer a running commentary to his behavior, his actions, his words. Not that she normally does. That, at least, hasn't changed.

Everything else seems to have. Sinclair blinks at the end, though, even as he's wincing, her brow wrinkling and eyes flickering as though she actually knows where she is again. "I'm not expecting you to."

[Alexander] "Really." There's a dubious, hard note in his voice. "Isn't that what most Garou want of their kin when they show up bloody and fucked up, wanting to fuck? Some way to let it all out and be okay?"

For a Vaughn rant, that really wasn't too bad. Two, three sentences. A sudden silence, as though he forcibly shut himself up. A few seconds go by.

Then, "Sorry. That was a low blow."

[Sinclair] "I have no idea if that's what most Garou want of their kin," she says, rather than lunging for him, grabbing him by the lower jaw, slamming his head against the wall. "Also, I cleaned myself the fuck up before I came over here. And I'm not fucked up."

Her voice is hard. It's low, and there's emotion in it where so much of what she's said tonight has been lacking that vital human note. "If you want to know the truth, I came here because I didn't think you'd try to... make it okay. Or comfort me. Or make me feel better."

She sighs, the exhale sudden and ragged. "I don't want to."

[Alexander] Alexander's mouth twists, not quite a smirk. He scratches the right side of his chest. Drops his hand again.

"So you wanted me to just be my usual asshole self. Fuck your brains out and then roll over and fall asleep. Is that about right?"

[Sinclair] "I don't know if the asshole is your self, or if that's usual or not. I don't know you."

This either does not bother her, or nothing is capable of bothering her right now. Which may be why she admits what she says next so simply, so easily:

"I wanted you to hurt me."

[Alexander] Instantly and inexplicably, Alexander is furious. It rises out of nowhere and consumes him like a tidal wave, closes over his head and drags him under and fills his ears with a dull rushing roar. His hands clench to fists atop his knees, straps of muscle pulling taut in his forearms; he turns away from her, looks across the room.

If he were Garou, rage would beat off of him now like hot dust off a dying star.
But he's not.

So all he has is his anger, which is visible nonetheless; nearly palpable; but not nearly so dangerous. It's some time before he says, low and entirely too glib, "Hey, guess what, Sinclair. I got a newsflash for you. That's called using someone. So fuck your apology. And fuck you, too. Good to know that when you're feeling masochistic, I'm the first face that pops into your head."

He's getting up off the bed, all at once, crossing the room to bang open his dresser and dig a shirt out. It's dark blue and fitted, has the name of some Atlantic City casino on it. He pulls it on. Then it's a pair of jeans whipped off the back of the desk chair where he'd thrown it, and as he's stepping into it he says:

"You know what's ironic? Of all the fuckfaces I've met in this city so far, I think you might be the only one I haven't tried to hurt."

[Sinclair] Alexander is furious. And Sinclair... isn't.

It's a switch, though not much of one. It isn't as though most days he has no temper, no ego to be slapped, no frustrations that lash out and retaliate. The difference is mostly in her, and the longer she's been in here, the more clear it's become that it isn't just her lack of rage or her exhaustion that is causing the change. Even without rage, Sinclair still has a temper. She still has a mind of her own, self-respect, certain expectations of how others should and should not be allowed to talk to her.

Yet he's snapped at her more than once, said things that should have made her lose her mind with fury. To be fair, she should have left a long time ago. She should never have come. She should have gone with fighting him, gone up on the roof and brawled until it broke her spirit, convinced her that she was either too dangerous to be let near Garou and Kin alike or convinced her that maybe she really was just weak and should give up. Something. Some resolution, found in the sensation of her face shattering under a fist.

She should have left when he told her to go find someone else to use.

"You're the first face that popped into my head because I want you, you... stupid... fuck," she snaps with difficulty, barely getting the words out at the end with any coherence. "And I don't want to be coddled, and reassured that it's okay, and told that it wasn't my fault. I don't wanna feel any weaker'n I already am," Sinclair spits out, a twang rather than a drawl underlining her words, starting to edge them with a midwestern flavor.

"I wanted t'come in here'n just...fuck cuz I was hopin' maybe when it happened it'd hurt bad enough that I'd care."

She pushes her fingers into her hair, nails raking her scalp, her breathing faster from frustration. And admission. God only knows how much shame, or guilt, or whatever it is.

[Alexander] His pants are halfway up his legs. The waistband is gripped white-knuckle in his hands, and he's bent over to pull them up, and he sort of just -- stops for a second.

And then he goes on. Pulls his pants up, zips them, buttons. He bends his head to look at what he's doing though he could easily do this by touch; when he's done with that he goes over to the closet and find a belt and strings it through and

when he's done with all that, instead of walking out the door, he pulls the chair out from the desk and drops heavily down in it. Knees apart, legs akimbo. Hands on his thighs.

He just stares at her for a minute.

"You came here to ask me to take your virginity?"

[Sinclair] By the time Alex sits down and speaks again, Sinclair has gotten a hold of herself enough to stop slipping into an old, old accent. Though anything 'old' with her is relative; she is barely legal to drink, and in many ways she's younger than most twenty-one, twenty-two year olds. Not all Garou age quickly, mature fast, after being thrown into a war they didn't ask to be a soldier in when they were born blessed with claws and a bloody destiny. Not all Garou change while still barely past childhood, though.

She stares back at him. There's a lot she could say. Minor corrections. Denials. Subtle agreements couched in something like threadbare poetry. Instead:

"Yeah," she says quietly, barely audible with the noise of the city waking up coming in through the open window. "Basically."

[Alexander] Alex has nothing to say to that. Not for a while, anyway. He just sits there staring.

Eventually, finally -- if she hasn't gotten up and left, if she hasn't said something in the very long meantime -- he draws a breath different from the rest; one that says he's about to speak.

Even that catches for a minute. Then he says, "Well, do you still wanna?"

[Sinclair] And it would have been so much easier if she'd left any of the times that she should have. It would have been much easier if they hadn't talked so damn much, if he'd just fucked her and not realized what was happening until she made some sound or pulled some face to communicate pain he wouldn't have been expecting. It would have been easier if he'd just been Alex, the one she can't say she's used to because she doesn't know him but the one she's seen before. The one everyone expects. The usual asshole self, or mockery of self.

He stares at her. She stares back. This is unusual, for a Kin and a Garou, to have their eyes locked for a long time without an expression of dominance. Perhaps it's because she has no need to exercise such over him. Perhaps it's because he has more inner strength than most, and rather than making all Garou try to break him in half, some of them just respect his backbone.

She is not leaving. And she has nothing to say in the seemingly endless stretch of moments that spin out from his realization of what she was seeking, what she is, what she wants.

But she frowns. She tips her head to the side. Her breasts slope gracefully, nipples hard in the cold, gleaming steel resting against flesh that's pale from lack of sunlight. Her nipples are pink, the areolae fading to peach. Her hair has dried, and if the sunlight actually came directly into this room it would turn each pale strand incandescent, not quite gold and not exactly white-blonde but far, far too easily compared to a halo in daylight. One has to wonder if she's been compared to an angel before, if that was a nickname she suffered under at some point.

If so, no wonder she's begun covering herself in tattoos of things like planetary symbols and names and snakes and poetry. No wonder she has let herself be cut into as an artform. No wonder she has metal in her ears, her arm, her breast. No wonder she has made herself physically more and more harsh, more and more grounded, less likely to be compared to something not just inhuman but otherworldly. Gaia only knows what she would be like if she did not cling so tightly to the tangible, the physical, the earthbased.

She's sitting up in his bed, covers around her thighs, her lower back dipping inward, curving to her buttocks against his sheets, her body twisted around somewhat so she can see him clearly. Stare at him like she does.

"Do you want me?"

[Alexander] "I don't know."

He thinks about it for a while.

"I mean. Yeah. I like the way you look. And move. I like your tits." His eyes drop briefly to that body part in question, then return to her face. Anything but this flatness of tone, this matter of factness, would make what he's saying inexcusably moonstruck. But he is flat. Matter of fact. Unadorned and unapologetic. "I think you're hot," he finishes.

"But you kinda freak me out right now." Another pause. Then he tells the truth, "You scare me pretty much all the time."

[Sinclair] She huffs out a breath. "Yeah," she says, though whether this is agreement or acceptance or simply a lack of surprise is hard to tell. Sinclair doesn't cover up her body as he talks about it, doesn't blush or turn her head to the side. She looks vaguely uncomfortable, but not terribly.

A couple of minutes ago she was running her hand over the flat firmity of his abdomen and telling him she liked it, even while knowing that her liking it was hardly the point.

She brings her hands up, covers her face, and scrubs at it in a way that looks a bit too rough, a bit too hard for how tired she seems. At least, it would be if she were human. It would be, if she felt pain the way others do. She has no unintentional scars on her body; none that he's seen, at least, and he hasn't looked that carefully. Her hands drop again, and her eyes go to him.

"I kinda freak me out, too." She doesn't add 'right now'. She doesn't mean 'right now'.

[Alexander] That makes him snort a laugh and frown at the same time. Truth be told, it might be the first time he's really thought of that possibility at all. That Sinclair might frighten not only all the sheep around her, but herself as well. That once upon a time Sinclair didn't know for certain that she would Change. That once upon a time Sinclair was more or less human.

"Yeah," he says. "I guess you would."

He lifts a hand to his face, scratching at his jaw, his palm over his mouth. Drops it. "This is the weirdest morning ever," he confesses suddenly.

[Sinclair] There is nothing she can say to that. It does not feel like morning. It feels something like her last day on earth, and the day won't end. It is still last night, still Arthur dying in front of her, Joey and Charlie nearly so. She knows she would have killed them if she had not managed to beat the creature out of her veins and soul by cracking her skull, biting her arms and breaking her ribs. She knows that she is alive right now because Charlie chose to heal her instead of take vengeance in the name of protecting Joey and anyone else who might be in their situation in the future.

And a part of her wants to say I wouldn't hurt you. Not really. Not like that. Not forever.

And a part of her just wants to not lie, to not pretend she has more control than she does, when she does not believe right now she has any at all.

It isn't true; Sinclair is in control. Sinclair can stop herself. She stopped herself even when she had self-determination ripped out of her by the Wyrm. She cannot see the honor or wisdom in managing to pull herself out of it right now, though. She can't see the honor or wisdom in voicing her guilt at Arthur's Gathering when Charlie seemed perfectly willing to -- at least partly -- cover it up. She can't see the difference between forcing herself on her Kin, breaking him for what she needs, and what she has done since entering: asking permission. Questioning what he wants for himself, and what he does not.

Sinclair just huffs again, and there's no more mirth in it now than there was before. She wants to be angry with him for saying this is weird. She wants to tell him, again, what the hell she just went through. But these desires feel oddly manufactured, forced, brought up by a pride that feels so distant and useless she can only stare at it from a place that is beginning to feel, more or less, a little normal again.

She looks at him. "I've had weirder," she says, not as oneupmanship -- not right now, at least -- but because it's simply the truth, even though it stuns her to say it and realize that it's not a lie. There's a pause, then: "Look, I... don't know if Joey is in our room or if she's gonna go back there or what. And I don't want to... yeah."

Be alone.

But she's already said that once. She doesn't say it again. She doesn't tell him: So stay.

"So if you're cool with it, I'm just gonna stay right here for awhile. And maybe sleep. But I'll get outta your hair..." Sinclair blinks, exhales. "At some point."

[Alexander] In all the silence, all the long and awkward pauses, Alexander shifts around. It's partly something like the fear he spoke of; nervousness. It's partly just that he has too much energy in him right now. A true child of cockroach and the weaver after all, he lives life to the clock. 6am is wakeup. 6:15 - 7am is running. 7am - 9am is beating the crap out of machines, irons, someone else's face. 9am is...

His body prepares for the routine. His metabolism is used to cranking up, to giving him the energy he needs at this time of day. He has trouble sitting still because he feels like he should be doing something. Moving. Fighting. Expending.

So he shifts. Pulls one foot back. Puts it out again. While she speaks, he plants his feet and leans elbows on knees. He clasps his hands under his nose, and then lowers his brow to the points of his knuckles for a moment.

"I guess I can write. And I've got a stack of DVDs to rip." When he sits up straight and laughs, it sounds a little surprised at himself, and about as mirthless as hers was. "You might as well stay here 'til whenever. We're family, and all."

[Sinclair] Something about that causes twinge across her brow, a sudden and fleeting tightness. "Yeah," she says, useless and ineloquent. He's never heard her be otherwise. He likely won't. Much of the writing she adds to the archives on GW.net are tales he does not have automatic access to. There are recordings out there of her singing, but they are several years old, and anything on there more than a few weeks is Old News. He is not going to hear her howling anytime soon. He has not been present any of the times she has sung in her human voice in this city.

She may as well be an Ahroun. Or a Gnawer. Or anything but what she supposedly is, what she is not sure how to define.

The furrow in her brow and the tension in her jaw goes by, and she slides down in his bed, puts her head on his pillow. This time she does not sniff around for his scent with avid curiosity; she already has it in her mind. She already has it, at the moment, so thick in her awareness that she could find him from across the city if she needed to, and that disturbs her enough that she doesn't even let herself inhale more of it from the rough cotton.

"Don't do that, by the way," she says lowly, no longer looking at him becaue she is looking past the rise of the pillow at the opposite wall, at Gabbie's half of the room. If he can see her from his vantage point, she is taking up most of the bed, legs tangled under the covers, the blankets heavy on the rise of her hip, the dip of her waist, most of her upper half still bared carelessly. "Do shit for me just because I'm a Walker, I mean. Okay?"

[Alexander] While she slides down in his bed again, he gets up and picks his laptop off the ground. It's nothing spectacular, though rather new; something upper-middle-range, designed as a desktop replacement. He lifts it onehanded, the tendons in his forearm tensing against the weight.

He's going over to the desk when she speaks again. His hand pauses on the keyboard while the laptop wakes itself from sleep. An eyebrow's quirked.

"What, you want me to do it outta the goodness of my heart?" His tone hits somewhere between disbelief and mockery; then it slides into something closer to amusement. "Yeah well. Just this once."

[Sinclair] "Yes,"

she says, to the wall, to Gabbie's bed. "Or not at all."

[Alexander] His response is non-verbal. It's just a cast of his eyes to her, then away. Keys click-clack on the laptop. He taps the trackpad, clicks here, then there.

And then he turns to her. "Hey, Sinclair." He waits for her to look at him. "It wasn't just 'cause you're a Walker."

[Sinclair] Throughout the past hour or so that Sinclair has been in Alex's room, from knocking initially to this moment, there have been long pauses in the conversation, points where one or both of them sat in utter silence trying to process the conversation they were having, the information they were exchanging, the things they were feeling when supposedly they do not feel very much at all. Not much of that silence has been interrupted prematurely. They have not interrupted each other, where they might otherwise. He has snapped. She has scared him. He's dressed and anxious. She's naked and warm and starting to doze off in his bed in a way she could not when she was alone in here, just as exhausted but unable to close her eyes.

He says her name just before she drifts off. If she were asleep, she would not wake. If she were even so much as a moment past the point of unconsciousness, she would not hear him and open her eyes. As it is, she looks rather groggy when she turns her head, tilts her neck, and looks at him.

"Okay," she says slowly, "so why?"

[Alexander] Alexander shakes his head. "I don't know. Same reason I got those little gourds for you at the bonfire, I guess."

He turns back to his computer, adjusting the angle of the screen a little. "Catch some z's, Sinclair."

[Sinclair] "What reason's that?" she presses, pushing up on her elbow, peering at him more intently. "That I scare you?"

[Alexander] She won't let it go. He looks at her, frowning now, irritated. "No. It wasn't 'cause you scare me or 'cause I'm 'supposed' to. I don't know why. Because I wanted to. Don't ask me why again because I don't know."

[Sinclair] "Fucker, I'm not the one who brought it up," she says, with a lash of frustration in her tone that would have far more impact if she weren't exhausted and far less if she were not... her. "What the hell was I supposed to do with that, just roll over in a cocoon of contentment and zonk out? Jesus Christ, Alex, I feel like a fucking idiot right now, stop biting my goddamn head off."

[Alexander] Alex's mouth shuts, compresses to a tight line. He looks at her for a while. Then he turns back to his laptop. "I just figured," he says, "you'd wanna know I wasn't just suddenly doing my goddamn duty as a kin or something. I didn't sign up to self-psychoanalyze and figure out why I did do it."

[Sinclair] "Look," she says to his profile, a moment or two -- or three, or four -- after he's turned away, "I'm shit for keeping my mouth shut, even when I should, alright? The only time I've ever been good at lying or sneaking around, I was Wyrmtainted. So let me break it down."

She sits up slowly, the blankets rustling, the coarse sheets whispering as a choral echo to everything she says. Sinclair puts her weight on one locked arm, one shoulder higher than the other, the line of her torso a long, gradual dip from ribs to hip. It's reminiscent of a graph, her body approaching infinity. And then she breathes, and it's broken by the expansion of her ribcage, the reminder that she is mortal.

If not human.

"Been attracted to you since I met you. Liked you since that speech you gave in the park after I yanked Gabbie's head back. And I know you're not a nice guy, and I know you're just as freaked out by me as everyone else, but I don't want anyone looking soulfully into my eyes or holding me while I sleep or telling me how much I matter to them when more'n likely one of these days some monsters or maybe my own people are going to tear my throat out and leave my folks to wonder what the fuck happened."

She takes another breath. Exhales raggedly. "I didn't come to you because I thought you'd make it all okay, or because I have a crush on you, or because I'm feeling masochistic. I didn't even come to you just because I wanted to feel something other than... numb. I came in here because this," and she lifts her hand, flicks it between the two of them, "is normal for me."

Her hand drops back to her lap. "I came to you because somehow, you make me feel like myself again, even myself is pretty monstrous, and even if I'm not entirely sure what myself is. And I'd rather have that than comfort, or consolation, or compassion.

"I didn't come here expecting you to do or say or be anything other than what you do, say, and are anyway. Because that's what helps. That, you asshole, is why I give a fuck about you not doing shit for me just because I'm a Walker and you're Walker kin. That's why I like you."

She seems, at this conclusion, to be a little lost, as though she's not sure if that was what she intended to say when she started talking. As if she just went farther than she did mean to go. Sinclair exhales heavily, all the air in her lungs, everything she's got left, and plants both hands on the mattress, levering herself back down. "Alright. That's all I had to say. I'm sleepin'."

[Sinclair] [Even IF myself is pretty monstrous...]

[Alexander] Somewhere between I came in here and I came to you, Alexander stop pretending to be reading his email and leans back in the desk chair, turning his head to look at Sinclair. His brow is still knit. For what it's worth he does listen to her. Doesn't interrupt, doesn't laugh at her, doesn't yell at her some more.

Listens.

When she's finished, she levers herself down and announces her intent to sleep. He looks at her a little longer. Then he says, "Y'know, sometimes you look at me like I'm a weak little animal you could tear to little bits. Which," a shrug of his shoulders, "is sort of the truth, but still scares the fuck outta me and pisses me off too. But the weird thing is you might also be the only person in this whole city that gets it that just because I do a nice thing now and then, it doesn't make me redeemed or a changed man or even nice. And just because I'm not a nice guy doesn't mean all I'm ever allowed to do is be an ass. It's sorta like you're the only one that's figured out I'm a person, not a cartoon."

This has only the slightest relation to what she's told him. He's not sure why he's telling her now, except -- she's told him why she's here. Now he's telling her why he's letting her be here.

As though the choice were really his.

"Anyway." He raises a hand to his face, scrubs his right eye with the heel of his palm. "That's all I got to say too."

[Sinclair] For a little while there -- this is normal for me.

you make me feel

comfort, consolation, compassion

-- they are looking directly at each other, blue eyes to hazel. Before she started modifying herself, coating her body in metal and ink and scars intended for beauty rather than glory, it was not uncommon for other Garou to mistake her for a missing Fenrir. Her hair is so pale, her eyes so bright, her skin slow to tan and her strength in battle unexpected for a Galliard of any other tribe. Even in her other forms, she has an element of steel and iron to her, snow and ice, that speaks more to the Get than the Walkers.

Her blood doesn't sing with the history of Norse heroes, though. It makes no sound at all but the living, embodied whisper of all life, pushed hither and yon by her heartbeat, which goes faster sometimes, which is faster now. She understands the Onesong as well as she she understands the Eddur. It does not matter if she could have been born of Fenris or not, just as it does not matter that she can eviscerate Ahrouns and New Moons alike. She is a Walker. She is a Galliard.

She's quiet for so long after that he may think she actually has fallen asleep in his bed, so deep and so quick that she's imperturbable. In the end, though, she does say something, her voice low: "That's not how I mean to look at you.

"That's not how I see you."

Sinclair sighs, closing her eyes finally, turning on her left side, facing the wall. "That's not how I see anyone."

[Alexander] Alexander doesn't say anything to that. It's possible he doesn't believe her. It's possible he just doesn't know what to say. It's entirely possible he's still reeling a bit from

well, everything that happened. Everything from the knock on the door when he was lacing his shoes, to now.

She's turned to face the wall. She's closed her eyes, and a moment later her breathing is steady and even and he knows she's asleep. He faces his laptop and he starts to type. He doesn't get very far before he's checking his email again, surfing the internet, watching youtube on his headphones, blogging, posting to GWnet, trolling some little Cliath's RoP forums somewhere.

Alexander knows already that Sinclair's hard to wake up when she's asleep. He's quiet for the first hour or so. Then, gradually -- accidentally at first, and then simply because he's figured out nothing short of artillery fire would wake her -- he stops trying to sneak around his own room. While he never breaks out the drumsticks, it's nothing lose to silent in his room. Drawers start banging open and shut again. He clackety-clacks away at his keyboard. He turns on his TV and watches Family Guy for a while, laughing out loud at the better gags. He leaves

but only to get his Xbox, which he hooks up to his TV.

He eats lunch in his room. He calls his sparring partner and cancels their afternoon workout. He eats dinner downstairs and comes back up with an apple. She's still dead to the world.

The sun sets. Night falls. Eventually Alexander runs out of things to do in the small confines of his living quarters. Eventually he pushes Sinclair over in his bed, lays down atop the covers in his street clothes, and decides to take a nap, himself.

When Sinclair wakes up, it's dark in the room. The kinsman's fast asleep with his arms folded across his chest, his legs crossed at the ankles, compacting himself to share his bed with her without touching her. He doesn't wake up when she gets out of bed, though he does wake up when she's dressing. He blinks at her blearily.

"Where are you going?" he asks.

And when she tells him, wherever it is, he closes his eyes, fumbles for his blankets, swings them up over his body inside-out.

"Come back if you need to," he yawns, and rolls over. It's nearly 9pm; close enough to bedtime for him that it didn't matter.

[Sinclair]
Throughout the hours -- upon hours -- that Sinclair sleeps, it seems that nothing will make her stir but her own mind. She does not so much as twitch when Alex bangs drawers, clacks on his keyboard, laughs out loud, plays video games. She lies curled on her side most of the time, rolling to sprawl on her back after awhile. She mutters, occasionally, in her sleep:

"Front handspring step out, round-off backhandspring step-out, round-off back handspring, full-twisting layout."

or

"Leibniz was robbed..."

and

"Stop it, that tickles," followed by a low chortle. She smiles in her sleep, flapping her hand at her jawline, and rolls back over.

The Galliard does not, and would not, have any idea of Alex chose to leave for the vast majority of the day. If he left and went to Tribull, if he sparred until he got told to cool off again for playing too rough, if he went about his regular schedule or tortured skittish women with his mere presence. She would sleep as deeply as she does, as unbothered by her own movements or the cold from the open window as she is unperturbed by any noise Alex makes. She doesn't know he's there anymore, doesn't know about the cancellation or the fact that he comes back after eating.

Sinclair moans softly when he pushes her over, not waking but reacting to the pressure. She curls up tighter, as though instinctively reacting to another presence in the bed, making room where she might not if this were her own den, and not a borrowed one.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs in her sleep, settling back down as Alex draws his arms and legs in on himself so that he doesn't so much as brush against her. She sounds vaguely broken. "I'm so sorry."

Her eyes open hours later, around the time that she would normally be waking up to patrol or meet with her packmates or go to the caern to make talens. Sinclair lets out a sigh, and then becomes fully conscious. Even before that moment, she was aware of being next to another body, near enough to smell, to hear breathing, to feel warmth without touch. Very slowly, because she is not only drowsy but unaware of how deep her impromptu host sleeps, she twists around in bed, looking at Alex, the muscles in his face slack, his body heavy and still rather than all but vibrating with the urge to move

which she understands, too.

Sinclair takes her time drawing her legs up from under the covers, pushing them down her thighs and past her knees with one careful hand. She all but holds her breath when she crawls over him to get out of the bed, her heart slamming against her ribcage, and steps lightly onto the thinly carpeted floor. Her clothes are still at the end of the bed, though her bra has fallen off the edge of the mattress. She dresses quickly but quietly, making up for in natural grace what she lacks in speed borne of practice.

She's pulling up her jeans, buttoning and zipping them, when he wakes and turns slightly, blinking at her. Something twists in her chest, causing a furrow across her brow. She tells him the truth; there's no reason not to. "Arthur's grave," she whispers. She seems better than this morning. Stronger. More steady, though imperfect. She hasn't looked out the window yet, hasn't seen the waning moon again, and they can both be glad of it.

Sinclair watches him roll over, wrap himself up, and she wants to say

[i]What if I want to?[/i]

and instead says

"Thanks, Alex."

His door closes a moment later.