come back.

[Sinclair] The fight is still going on behind Alex when he uses the stool in his hands to break one of the front windows and run, quite literally, for his life. He doesn't know it, but one Garou is already dead back there. More might be dead even as he bolts. He heard loud reports from a semi-automatic shotgun. And as he's running for the nearest El, clutching the gouging wound in his side to try and stop the flow of blood. It isn't deep enough that he's going to bleed out on the train. He's taken enough broken bones and god knows what else in a cage to know: it feels worse than it actually is.

It says something about the size of Chicago that most people who glance his way see the blood saturating his side and his clothes and just decide they would rather look elsewhere. Some of them look nervously at him, expecting him to go pale and pass out any second. One person -- a youngish, slightly plump woman who looks like she's on her way home from night classes -- actually pauses as she's getting up to disembark and asks him if he's going to be okay.

Like she'd be able to do shit about it if he weren't. Whatever Alex says to her, she gets off at her stop. He goes to his. He goes home, climbing up the stairs because this shithole doesn't have an elevator, of course, and unlocking his door to go inside.

Some of the adrenaline from being wounded has worn off by now. He heard sirens in the distance as he got on the El, but has no idea whether there are a bunch of dead Garou to be found, including one metis, or if they managed to fight their way out. The pain in his torso is more real than it was in the moment itself, which is a relentlessly horrible feeling. His senses are likely so heightened, so intense right now, that he barely makes it into his entryway before it hits him.

There's every chance that normally it wouldn't be like this, but given what happened tonight, the sudden awareness that there is a predator in his home is like electric spikes jabbing one after the other from the base of his spine right up to his skull, lighting up a dozen signals at once in his brain. She's here, says instinct, the same instinct that told him to run the fuck away when he damn well knew fighting would get him killed. Quickly. And irrevocably.

She's here. And he knows: she can smell him.

That's what he knows first, what his primordial brain knows before any other part of him has a chance to chime in and remind him that 'she' gnaws on Twizzlers like stogies while playing video games, 'she' sometimes falls asleep in the middle of whatever she's mumbling to him about right when the lights go out and the bedcovers come up over them and it's quite possibly the most fucking adorable thing he's ever seen barring awkward puppies or this one picture of a polar bear cub, 'she' is so happy just to get a goddamn milkshake with him that she can't stop smiling, and that 'she' has a key. That he gave her. Because he wanted her to know this was her home, too. Or could be.

Sinclair hears the door close and even while his brain is trying to process

a) what happened at Juiceapalooza
b) what happened to his ribcage
c) what the fuck is in his apartment

she's calling out "Alex?" and she sounds rather happy to be asking this entirely pointless question, because really, who else would it be, and can't she just tell, but then there's the uncanny lightness of her footsteps flicking down the hallway and her head poking around the corner, hair in a messy low ponytail, electric blue paint on her fingernails, barely any clothes -- if flower-covered panties and a blue cotton camisole with a cartoon canary on it count as an outfit -- on her body, mouth in a broad grin,

though that fades.

Her nostrils flare. Her Rage lashes up the walls like fire licking at the paint, which may as well be like booted feet running up his back, slamming those electric spikes in just a little deeper. In a second, or a thousand years, she releases a slow, measured exhale, and pulls her body back a bit. She's standing several feet from him now, nearly at the edge of the couch, doing everything she can that stop herself from fly off the handle. She doesn't even ask him what happened. She doesn't trust herself to speak. She's afraid she'll scare him if she does.

[Alex Vaughn] Terror -- selfish, self-preserving terror for his life -- pared away all unnecessary thoughts when he escaped from Juiceapalooza. There was blessedly nothing more complex in his head than fuck this noise! and I'm not dying here! when he threw the stool through the windows and vaulted after it. There was no real thought of who he was abandoning, whether or not they would die, where the fuck he was going to go, when he hit the pavement outside with his sneakered feet and ran.

Pain didn't even set in until four or five blocks later, and it started first in his lungs, in his chest, overexerted from sprinting flat-out for a quarter mile. For half a mile. For however far he's come. He had to slow then, rein it in to a fast jog, which was the slowest he dared to go for fear of something following him, and the fastest he dared to go for fear of cramping up and being unable to run in case something was following him.

After a while his mind stopped spinning its wheels long enough for him to remember to look around, to recognize street names, to divine his own location. He started thinking about how he was going to get home. The El: that sounded like a good idea.

It's not until he's approaching the well-lit station, empty at this hour in this less-populous part of town, that he even remembers the wound in his side. Some bitched clawed him. Clawed. Who the fuck does that? He's still bleeding: there's too much wetness on his left side to be sweat. He's thankful that his sweat-wicking shirt is black. He's not thankful that his track pants are grey, sidestriped in white. He lost his goddamn iPod shuffle, too, and that, absurdly enough, makes him more angry than anything else.

He buys a ticket from the machine and walks in. The wound has begun to throb, shooting spears of pain up his spine. He's grimacing when the train pulls up, and when he takes a grateful seat inside it, other passengers stare for a second before deciding to look away.

By then, he's bleeding visibly against the hand he holds against his side to dull the clamor of pain somewhat. His palm is red, the cracks between his fingers; the side-stripe on his pants is starting to soak it up.

He's passing Sedgwick station when the friendly-faced woman asks him if he's going to be okay. He manages a grin that looks like a wince, babbles something about slipping and falling while he was out jogging. At least he's dressed for the part. She gets off the train, and he glances over his shoulder couple times as it's pulling away from the station to make sure she's not calling an ambulance. Or a cop.

The wound is burning, stabbing, by the time he gets to the Chicago Ave, brown line station. It's not even that bad. He's taken enough punishment in a ring, in a cage, to know better than that. He's taken enough hits that snapped his head around so hard he blacked out before he hit the ground. He's had ribs broken, arms dislocated, face beaten to mush often enough to know this is nothing, this'll heal up in a couple of days, but by god it hurts: stings disproportionate to damage the way cat claws and human bites do.

And, it appears, fomor claws.

Fuck.

It's still a few painful blocks on foot before he gets home. Adrenaline's all worn out by then. He's tired. And sore. And humiliated, now, angry at himself; at the way he just ran like a rabbit. At the way he never even managed to make a dent. Every step shoots pain up his side. He couldn't run now if he tried; can't imagine how the fuck he managed to sprint so far, so fast, not even twenty minutes ago.

There's his building, then. There's the lockless, opaque, heavy wooden door. There's the dismal little lobby with its rows of mailboxes, its drab carpet and wallpaper, its steam heating still fucking turned on despite that it makes the common areas of the building a billion degrees. He sleeps with his windows open at night now just to counteract the heat seeping in through the walls, sneaking in through the radiators even with the valves turned off. There are the stairs leading up, up, up, up, and

there's rage beating out of his door.

Fuck, he thinks again, even though he would've called her anyway. Would've called her -- but not yet. Not until he's had a chance to clean up, to bandage up, to take a shower and a shot of somethingstrong and calmed his nerves enough not to be the rattled mess he is right now. He thinks briefly of turning and leaving, coming back later, but she can probably smell him through the door and even if she can't -- the prospect of going out into the cold night again with a gash on his side is unthinkable. Fuckit. He opens the door.

She calls his name. He doesn't have a chance to answer, to verbally prepare her, before she's coming into sight and seeing him and her rage spikes into the air so fast

that he remembers, a bolt from the blue, one of the few times his brother made him afraid for his life. Aaron was barely a Cliath then, and they were seventeen years old and still living with their folks, and Alexander was still waiting for his First Change. It was one of the first times Alexander provoked a Garou enough to get his ass handed to him. When Aaron saw his face that night,

it felt just like this.

He holds a hand up as though to stave something off, as though to keep her from asking questions or coming closer when really what he wants her to do is not be so angry. As though she could control that at all.

"I'm okay," he says. That's the first thing he says, shutting the door behind him, leaning against it. He looks pale; his hair is still damp with sweat. His shirt, too, though some of that wetness is not sweat at all. "Don't worry. It looks worse than it is. Just ... let me get cleaned up and I'll explain, okay?"

[Sinclair] Sinclair, more in her chest and shoulders than anything else, sinks away from that hand he briefly holds up, the way a much-beaten dog might shrink away from anyone reaching to touch it. The look in her pale, wrathful eyes is flickering with shame for a moment, but no: she can't fucking control this. She can smell his blood and smell sweat that is rancid with fear and it all churns her stomach and ignites her anger and something in her wants badly and immediately to --

jesus. She doesn't even know what. She grips the arm of the couch and rests her ass lightly on it, but she's not resting. She's not reclining. She's barely even 'sitting', and it seems she could spring away from the cushion before he could process it visually if she were roused.

Two instincts have always torn her apart, since her First Change started to creep up on her and she kept pushing it back, pushing it down, pushing it and its urges away. Right now one sees a threat. Needs to find that threat and destroy it. Ravage it down to bone with bared teeth and then drag it back to the den to ward off lesser predators, like a trophy and a warning. Stay the fuck away.

The other needs -- does not want, but needs -- to see to it that Alex is cleaned up, bandaged, healed, given food, put somewhere warm and safe and hidden away and her body in between his and all passageways to it. The urge to kill is slashing against the urges to nurture and protect, and as usual, it's a knock-down-drag-out just to see who achieves primacy. Who gets to go first, in Sinclair's world.

She stares at him, clutching the upholstery of his couch with its mismatched pillows, looking -- even with tattoos bared and metal through her arm to freak out the normals -- like a girl who should probably be finishing up her last year of college right now, not looking like she won't calm down until she rips something apart with her bare hands. And he can probably guess which instinct is winning -- probably can't guess what the other one even is. Of course it's the one has been winning since her last years as a human being, because it was so much easier to give in to and she never needed anyone's permission to satisfy it.

Her teeth are literally on edge, jaw almost trembling from what may very well be the desire to bark. Growl. She doesn't do either. She holds herself back, and harder, holds herself back from him, and when she realizes she's about to bare her teeth at him, closes her mouth firmly. Exhales slowly again, through he nose, as though to cleanse it of the scents that are setting her off.

"Let me help," she says, trying very hard not to make it a snap. Trying very hard not to make it an order. Trying, with every ounce of control not diverted to sniffing him to pick up the trail of his attacker and going out the door, into the night, to hunt it to a bloody, preferably screaming, End.

Her control makes her voice small and tight and quiet. "Come to the bathroom and let me help. I won't freak out. I won't heal you unless you want me to. Just... let me help."

Let me do something.

[Alex Vaughn] "Sinclair..."

That tone says he's going to protest. That tone says he's getting ready to dig in his heels, to insist on doing it this way when she wants to do it that way, and everything she says is just going to make him bunker down tighter

Only -- then he trails off. And he looks at her. And there's the sense that as much as he wants to be alone right now, to wash the blood off his hand and his side, to splash cold water on his face -- he knows that she needs to help. And not merely needs to help him bandage himself, but needs to help him. Needs to take care of him.

"Listen to me, baby," he says instead: carefully, lowpitched. "I'm not that hurt. I'm really not. But I'm freaked out, and I haven't even had time to process anything yet. And I can't handle you being so intense right now.

"Please calm down. It's barely even a scratch. Okay?"

[Sinclair] Let me do something.

Please calm down.

She might bristle at that, if it were pride or even rage fueling all this. She might snap back at him before he even gets past her name, because she thinks he might snarl at her and be angry and prideful right back and be a stupid fucking boy and --

Except that isn't what's going on inside of her. She's glass. She's an open book, and she's hiding nothing. So Alex sees, and quite clearly, how badly she needs to help him. Or at very least, feel like she's helping him. Feel like she can take care of him. It isn't about feeling needed. It isn't about whether he can take care of himself or not. It's just a drive, pure and uncomplicated as that, and as much as she struggles with it, he of all people is allowed to see how deep it runs in her.

The fact that he has to be careful with his tone makes her wince inwardly. She tightens her jaw when he insists that he's not that hurt. That it's a scratch. She hears things, though, interprets them as she will, and gives a slow nod.

Please calm down. is something she can do. Or at least try to do. And it will help.

A moment passes. A couple of heartbeats. She looks from his wound to his eyes, nodding again. "As ironic as this might sounds," she says quietly, "it'll help me calm down if you let me help you clean up and get bandaged. We don't have to talk about it yet. But... can we go to the bathroom now?"

This time, half a beat. "...Or do you want me to stay away?"

[Alex Vaughn] He doesn't answer that after all. Not verbally, anyway. After a second, he holds his hand out to her.

She's been here for some time already. Long enough to change out of her street clothes; maybe long enough to take a shower, or even a bath, or even a makeshift bubble bath using his bodywash. Long enough to fool around on the Xbox. Long enough to nap -- well; no. This is Sinclair. If she slept, she'd still be asleep.

The apartment contains her scent now, though, some undefinable essence of her. The tiny spaces hold her. He can feel it as they go to the bathroom, his clean hand in hers, his bloody hand going again to his side.

In the tinier still space of his bathroom, where there's barely room enough for the two of them, he hesitates a moment and then pulls his shirt off, awkwardly, raising only the arm on his unwounded side. He ducks his head out of the collar next; finally, strips it off his arm.

He wasn't lying. The cut isn't bad. A single gash, not deep enough to hit bone; a smaller scratch above it. The blood has begun to scab over, red-black in the mouth of the wound.

"I've got some," he gestures vaguely at the closet out in the hall, "first aid crap out there. Can you grab me some gauze and tape?"

[Sinclair] They haven't been here together every night since the last time she slept here, using her key for the first time with a gleeful flourish and then wantingly -- albeit nervously -- asking him if he'd go down on her again. But she's come and gone a few times. He's come back from the gym to find the bed rumpled, as though she wanted to sleep and wanted to sleep here and bury her face in his sheets and let it be the last thing to carry her into unconsciousness. He's come back from a morning run and discovered that the bathtub and sink were recently used -- she stopped by to shower and brush her teeth.

This is the first time he's come home and found here there though, quite literally waiting for him to get back. Hell. Maybe she was in those tiny panties and playful camisole because she wanted to maul him the moment he got in. God knows she has the appetite to do something like that, to want to feel his hands going up under her shirt or into her underwear because somehow that changes the sensation, the mood, something. Or maybe she was just getting ready for bed, waiting for him to come home so she could hang out with him for awhile before it was his 'bedtime'.

Yeah, she showered. Played games. Put some peanut butter on saltines and ate them standing up in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with her long legs stretched out, listening to Tripoli bang around happily inside the oven, enjoying just... being there.

And then she went to go paint her toenails, sitting on the edge of the bed, and the door opened and closed and the smell of blood hit her seconds after she bounded upwards to come see him.

Sinclair stands up when he offers his hand, takes it gingerly, not because she's afraid she'll hurt him but because she knows she's too intense for him right now and he's putting that aside to hold her hand. Her palm warms his, chilled by being outside, running. Losing blood. They walk to the bathroom door and shuffle inside, and Sinclair goes to the sink to turn on the water and start letting it get warm. She sees him starting to work his shirt off and has an urge to just cut or tear it off of him instead, because the shifting of the muscles in his side is visible and almost makes her wince for him.

She helps, though in this case it really isn't necessary. But it is calming her down. Little things, even taking the bloody shirt and dropping it into the tub to be dealth with later. They can save his pants for later. Sinclair is turning towards the sink again, presumably to get a cloth so they can clean the blood that's smeared, but he tells her: gauze and tape.

"Sure," she says, and steps outside to open that closet. Given the size of the apartment, it's not surprising that she still has half her body in the bathroom while she's grabbing gauze pads, rolled gauze, and medical tape. "Of course," she says, with only half-forced wryness, "you have a better-stocked First Aid kit than the Brotherhood."

[Alex Vaughn] The closet at the end of the hall is stocked with all sort of shit that he couldn't fit anywhere else in his teeny tiny apartment. There are clean towels in there; spare bedding. A heavier comforter for winter. There's also a huge costco-sized stack of toilet paper, and some large grey plastic bins with labels like SKI & SCUBA and ROLLERBLADE CRAP and JACKETS AND COATS and LEGOS. A poster tube. A vacuum that looks very rarely used. Some shoes. A punching bag. Some cans of compressed air for blowing out a computer. A box for his Xbox.

Also: a fairly impressive amount of first aid stuff. Not merely gauze bandages of assorted sizes and first aid tape, but Ace bandages for pretty much any conceivable form of strain or sprain. Heat packs, ice packs. A bottle of coagulant, the sort used by boxers in the ring. Muscle rub. Iodine. Hydrogen peroxide. Isopropyl alcohol.

She comes back with the gauze and tape he asked for, though, and by then he's run a washcloth under the tap and is carefully cleaning the wound. His left arm upraised, head bent, Alex hisses between his teeth as he peels dried blood from tender skin.

"I get in a lot of scrapes," he replies to her, wry himself. "It's useful to be able to patch up afterward."

[Sinclair] "You?" Sinclair says as she comes back in, carrying The Stuff after kicking the closet's door closed with her heel. She feigns her shock openly; she's calming down already, and he can tell. There's a quietude falling over her that can't be called peace, not with rage searing the insides of her veins and making his heart race just as much as it did from running to the metro station.

Sinclair moves her hand towards the cloth he's washing himself, but then refrains. She doesn't explain why. She sits on the back of the toilet, feet on the lid, bent over her lap and hands folded on her knees, hair over her shoulder, just

watching him now.

[Alex Vaughn] "Me," he replies, the same sort of exaggerated emphasis.

There -- improbable, but there: a smile on the corner of his mouth, so slight. He runs the washcloth under the tap again, dark red running to light, to pink, to nothing but a fading stain. He wrings the towel dry; hesitates, then takes a step and hands it to her.

The complex weave of muscle on his side, torn now: shifting under his skin as he raises his arm for her, bracing his palm against the wall. He doesn't grunt or hiss when she pats the towel against the wound; he's very careful, in fact, not to show pain or discomfort at all.

[Sinclair] Sinclair takes it when he steps over to her, but she doesn't immediately start to go about cleansing the wound for him. She tips her head, and holds it where he handed it to her, right between them. "It's like being tickled," she says, then nods at the cloth. "This doesn't hurt as bad when you're doing it yourself. I'll help you with the bandages; that'll be hard to do neatly by yourself, where the wound is."

She leans forward and kisses the corner of his mouth, the bit that almost smiled. It's soft, but it's getting less shocking to feel that sort of tenderness coming from her.

[Alex Vaughn] His hand comes up, though, warm towel and all. He catches her before he draws away; kisses her back, a little deeper than the one she had given him.

Then they draw apart. He looks at her a moment, then back down to the cut. He finishes cleaning it without fuss, swings back to the sink to wash the washcloth out. Shirtless, in profile like this, his torso is solid, triangular, lean -- the natural slightness his body would drift toward if left unattended evident in the narrow waist. Onehanded, he finishes with the washcloth and slings it over the towel bar, grabbing another, larger towel to dry off.

"If you can just help me tape it on," he says, "we can wrap an Ace on it to keep it in place through the night."

[Sinclair] When they've kissed it's never been quite like they're inventing it. But whether it's with biting, groaning hunger or slow, sweet invitation or --

like this, deep without being hard, soft without being timid, it always feels a little like discovery. In the most literal sense, Sinclair was a virgin when she met him. She'd made out with boys and a few men. She'd fooled around but none of it ever... got anywhere. It made her pang when Alex would go perfectly still because her rage spiked as a response to pain, or because she bit his lip while kissing him.

Unlike every other guy, though, he didn't recoil instantly, rearing back in mingled fear and revulsion, distrust. He didn't close his borders. He didn't even tell her to chill the fuck out. He just -- as he continues to do, almost always, when she seems close to snapping -- gets very still. And waits. It's still a fear reaction, but it's a more controlled one and it's a more patient one than she's ever received before from anyone who wasn't also a monster.

Every time she kisses him, or he kisses her, she has a slightly surprised air, as though it's the first time, and she's not quite sure how it's going to turn out. If it'll be soft or hard. If it'll be deep or light. If it'll be passing, or go on, and on, until -- like the first time he got her in his bed here -- they're barely tearing their clothes out of the way to get their bodies together.

She's smiling a little when he draws back, and relaxes where she is while he finishes cleaning himself off. While he's drying off, she goes to get the gauze pads and tape. "Hey... when you're ready, tell me what happened." She starts to apply the gauze pads while he holds his arm in a position that doesn't stretch the skin too taut. "This wasn't a knife wound," she adds, a bit more quietly.

Her hands are, beyond just warm, actually rather capable. Not expert, nowhere near, but she's done this a few times, too.

[Alex Vaughn] Alexander waits her, left arm lifted, while she bandages him. It occurs to him -- too late, now -- that he would've liked to shower first. He supposes he can jury-rig something later. Masking tape. Grocery bag. Doesn't matter now.

His eyes flicker to her briefly, then back down. Hazel, they are. A friendly sort of color, mostly light brown, a fleck of green here, a fleck of gold there. Threads of black. Dark, in the right light. Brilliant and multihued, in the right light.

"There's this new smoothie place up in Lakeview. Juiceapalooza. Sent out all these fliers. Free smoothies with my Tribull membership. Figured what the hell, I'll give it a try.

"When I got there, your old roommate Joey was there. Few others too. I didn't recognize them. Joey starts picking a fight with the juicers. I'm just waiting on my smoothie like what the fuck. Then Joey tells me they're fomori, and the place locks down, and ... "

He grimaces; it's not pain. His shoulder comes up on his good side, swipes quickly over his cheek as though to scratch an itch; dispel a fly.

"I tried to fight. I did shitall. I bashed one guy over the head with a napkin box. Then with a goddamn metal stool. Twice. He didn't even blink. And the others were all popping fur and ... everything was killing everything else and ...

"It looked like we were losing. So I -- " a quick breath, "I threw the stool through a window and ran. I didn't stop until I got on the train to come back here."

There's a pause after that. She's done with his bandage, but when her hands start to fall away he reaches for her, holds her palms against his skin, against his body. It might be one of the first times he's done this outside of sex, outside of simple intimacy. Held on to contact. Held onto her as though her touch was somehow important. Or necessary.

"I think everyone else there died. I don't know. It was looking grim when I ran the fuck away. I--"

He trips on that word again, that article, that self that he can't stand to face right now in the aftermath. A second or two.

"I would've called you after I got cleaned up. If only so you can tell the Sept what happened."

[Sinclair] Saran Wrap, Sinclair will mumble, possibly stirred from sleep or about to sleep, when or if Alex mentions showering. Or, while more alert and awake: I could always give you a sponge bath. Get a little white nurse's cap and everything.

For now, she listens as he tells her about what happened tonight at this new smoothie place. Her brow is furrowed to begin with, focused on what she's doing and controlling her base reactions at the sight of the blood still on his pants, the blood being absorbed by gauze over his wound. She pauses at the words I tried to fight. Keeps going a second later, after he's still again.

By the time the story's over, Sinclair's work on his side is most certainly done. It's not the best bandaging job in the world, but it'll do. And she doesn't immediately leave the bathroom to grab an Ace bandage. She moves back a bit, if only to see him better, and her hands are falling away, but he catches them and holds him on his body.

It makes her head tip slightly to the side, a gesture more animal in its quirking curiosity than human. Her hands instantly resist, but it's a fraction of a second before her palms simply rest against him, warm and shockingly, unfathomably soft... considering what she is. Considering the industrial piercing through one ear, the rings in the other, the steel jewelry in her nipple that can sort of be discerned through the thin cotton of her camisole. Considering the massive tattoo of a snake around her thigh and the ode to instruction by pain on her hip.

Anytime Sinclair is soft, anytime anything about her is soft, it's sort of hard to believe.

Her brow tightens at his thought that everyone there died. Joey was the only name she's heard, but there had to have been others of her kind there, fighting. Maybe dying. She's looking at him every time he falters in his words, as though she can tell what that is, why that is. She's quiet for a few moments, but she doesn't take her hands off of him.

Sinclair exhales, looking pained. "I think that means I have to go," she says quietly, like it's the last thing on earth she wants. And it is. It certainly wasn't what she wanted when she came over here and rubbed her face on his pillowcase, sniffing his scent out of them while he was away and couldn't laugh at her growling happily into his bedcushions.

She says it, also, like she knows he knew this was coming. "I need to find out what happened, and then ...yeah."

Tell the sept.

Sinclair, called Brutal Revelation now, doesn't tell him to tell her to go on ahead. Doesn't tell him I don't want to go. Doesn't confess anything other than what her eyes and her voice are already telling him, or her hands on his body. Later on she won't be mumbling anything about Saran Wrap or sponge baths, after all. She slides her hands off his torso, off the lean, hard muscle under the warm skin, only to wrap her arms gently around his waist and kiss his chest. Over his heart. She stays right there for a moment, counting heartbeats and seconds.

"Thank you," which goes unexplained. She has to go. She has to go soon. God only knows what's happened since Alex left. She starts to pull away, more firm than reluctant. "I'll come back," Sinclair says, catching his eyes with those words. "As soon as I can. Please don't leave."

[Alex Vaughn] Long, long before she says it, long before she says I'll come back, he says:

"Come back."

He says this right after she says I think that means I have to go. It blurts out of him, unintended. Her hands are still on his body then, his hands still on hers, and his tighten quickly, a brief clench of -- what? Want? Need?

Then she's coming closer. Her arms wrap around his waist, and the edge of his bandage just brushes her bicep. His arms go around her shoulders, draw her close; he bows his head to her. They stand there together for a while, holding each other within the narrow confines of his bathroom with its drab blue walls, its yellowing light-cover, its sink that's beginning to accrue mildew behind the faucets.

His apartment is dismal. The sort of dump people waste away in. He likes it anyway: because it's small, and snug, and his. She likes it anyway: because it's small, and snug, and his.

"I won't leave," he promises, later. "I'll stay right here and wait for you to come back. Okay?"

[Sinclair] In between whispering that she has to go and find out what happened and promising him she'll come back, he asks her to. Alex won't know Sinclair would have anyway, would have promised that tonight she wouldn't stay anywhere else. If any of her packmates had been in that battle they would have called her. They would have had her with them, they would have summoned her when things got serious; she would already know how it turned out, who survived. What was left of them.

It isn't some leftover loyalty to Joey Oliver that has Sinclair needing to go, though. For all she knows all the Garou tonight [i]did[/i] die. For all she or Alex know, there are still fomori there, and Gaia knows what they're doing to the corpses of werewolves. So she has to go. She has to go [i]now[/i], because she doesn't know that by the time she gets to Lake View firefighters will be putting out the flames and people will be having jabbering, standing interviews with cops, talking about gunshots. She doesn't know that by the time she gets to the Caern, she'll have a fucking body to bury.

But he tells her to come back, and she tells him she will. Soon as she can.

They hold each other for what feels like half a second. It isn't long enough, considering he's wounded and she's worried and she doesn't want to go so much as she needs to go. A part of her hopes there's something left alive. A part of her hopes to go into that fucking smoothie shop and find something with claws that could have done this to his ribcage and not just kill it but make it [i]suffer[/i], make it [i]scream[/i]. A part of her hopes that isn't so, because if it is, then several Garou have died tonight and she's going into the battlefield alone.

It feels like half a second. It actually is more like five. Maybe ten. And it isn't long enough.

Sinclair kisses his chest again, firmly, then reaches up and puts her hands on his face, drawing his mouth to hers and kissing him again there, deeper. Startlingly -- but perhaps understandingly -- the kiss is wanting. Passionate. And like ripping off a Band-aid, she steps back and away, doesn't even bother going to his bedroom but gets a pair of her jeans out of the fucking hamper to yank them on. As she is, she's looking at him. "Rest, okay? I don't care if that means watching t.v. or porn or playing a game or crashing the fuck out, but try to rest." Zips. Buttons. Kisses him again, quick, and is leaving the bathroom, pulling on a red hoodie from where it hangs over the back of the couch, shoving her feet into some old flipflops, looking over at him as she grabs her keys from the coffee table.

"I'll see you soon," she says, and it would be awkward if it weren't so fucking sincere.

He has a chance for a few words in there, something, but not much. Sinclair has to go.

So she goes.

[Alex Vaughn] Long, long before she says it, long before she says I'll come back, he says:

"Come back."

He says this right after she says I think that means I have to go. It blurts out of him, unintended. Her hands are still on his body then, his hands still on hers, and his tighten quickly, a brief clench of -- what? Want? Need?

Then she's coming closer. Her arms wrap around his waist, and the edge of his bandage just brushes her bicep. His arms go around her shoulders, draw her close; he bows his head to her. They stand there together for a while, holding each other within the narrow confines of his bathroom with its drab blue walls, its yellowing light-cover, its sink that's beginning to accrue mildew behind the faucets.

His apartment is dismal. The sort of dump people waste away in. He likes it anyway: because it's small, and snug, and his. She likes it anyway: because it's small, and snug, and his.

"I won't leave," he promises, later. "I'll stay right here and wait for you to come back. Okay?"

[Sinclair] In between whispering that she has to go and find out what happened and promising him she'll come back, he asks her to. Alex won't know Sinclair would have anyway, would have promised that tonight she wouldn't stay anywhere else. If any of her packmates had been in that battle they would have called her. They would have had her with them, they would have summoned her when things got serious; she would already know how it turned out, who survived. What was left of them.

It isn't some leftover loyalty to Joey Oliver that has Sinclair needing to go, though. For all she knows all the Garou tonight did die. For all she or Alex know, there are still fomori there, and Gaia knows what they're doing to the corpses of werewolves. So she has to go. She has to go now, because she doesn't know that by the time she gets to Lake View firefighters will be putting out the flames and people will be having jabbering, standing interviews with cops, talking about gunshots. She doesn't know that by the time she gets to the Caern, she'll have a fucking body to bury.

But he tells her to come back, and she tells him she will. Soon as she can.

They hold each other for what feels like half a second. It isn't long enough, considering he's wounded and she's worried and she doesn't want to go so much as she needs to go. A part of her hopes there's something left alive. A part of her hopes to go into that fucking smoothie shop and find something with claws that could have done this to his ribcage and not just kill it but make it suffer, make it scream. A part of her hopes that isn't so, because if it is, then several Garou have died tonight and she's going into the battlefield alone.

It feels like half a second. It actually is more like five. Maybe ten. And it isn't long enough.

Sinclair kisses his chest again, firmly, then reaches up and puts her hands on his face, drawing his mouth to hers and kissing him again there, deeper. Startlingly -- but perhaps understandingly -- the kiss is wanting. Passionate. And like ripping off a Band-aid, she steps back and away, doesn't even bother going to his bedroom but gets a pair of her jeans out of the fucking hamper to yank them on. As she is, she's looking at him. "Rest, okay? I don't care if that means watching t.v. or porn or playing a game or crashing the fuck out, but try to rest." Zips. Buttons. Kisses him again, quick, and is leaving the bathroom, pulling on a red hoodie from where it hangs over the back of the couch, shoving her feet into some old flipflops, looking over at him as she grabs her keys from the coffee table.

"I'll see you soon," she says, and it would be awkward if it weren't so fucking sincere.

He has a chance for a few words in there, something, but not much. Sinclair has to go.

So she goes.

[Alex Vaughn] "Hey -- "

This is when she's at the door, dressed so suddenly and ready to go so suddenly that he feels like he's caught in a whirlwind, caught in slow-motion. His mind feels sluggish and numb from the aftereffects of adrenaline dump, blood loss. It wasn't even until she'd started to pull her sweatshirt on that it occurs to him: they might still be there when she goes back. It' s not until she's ready to go, at the door, that it occurs to him to say,

" -- be careful. Okay?"

The door opens. Then it shuts. When Sinclair is gone, the apartment suddenly seems very quiet, as though a flame, an oxygen-devouring, brilliant core of incandescence, has gone out of it.



She tells him to rest. He tries to rest. He lies down on his bed but that stupid scratch on his side is throbbing now like a second pulse, and after a while he gets up and gets some advil and takes two, then two more. That takes the edge off, and he tries to sleep again, but now his neighbor's doing aerobics upstairs or something and the steady thump thump thumpthumpthump thump of her feet on the ceiling is driving him crazy. He gets up and gets his swiffer and pounds on the ceiling like an old man until she stops.

He tries to sleep again, and this time there's a plane overhead, or a car outside, or the neighbors' TV coming through the walls, or -- and he realizes it's not any of these things that wouldn't even begin to bother him on a good night; not the pain, not the noise, not any of that. He can't sleep because he's fucking worrying. Him. Alexander fucking Vaughn.

He gets up, then. He takes a shower after all. It takes him a long time to tape a bag over his midsection, but that keeps the bandage dry, at least, and it wastes a good amount of time. Afterward he feels cleaner, and more comfortable, and he moves to the living room since he isn't sleeping anyway. He thinks about the big guy that didn't even flinch from multiple whacks to the head with a barstool, the sort of thing that would've given your average human at least a lump the size of a goose egg. He thinks about the other Garou there, wonders how many are dead now, wonders

if Sinclair's coming back at all.

After a while he puts on a movie and stares at the screen. After a while he nods off after all, and when he wakes up again the screensaver from his DVD player is bouncing around the screen and the key's turning in the door.

[Sinclair] It's not her boyfriend that Sinclair contacts en route to the smoothie shop. She calls to her packmates via their totem and tells them what's going on. She tells them when she gets there what she sees. She tells them when she gets to the Caern what she knows. It isn't until after she's talked to Elders and to body-bearers and is heading towards the Graves to dig a new one that she pulls her cellphone out of her pocket to --

and it's a brand new phone, a Nexus One. Her parents sent it to her for her birthday, though she never asked them for anything and felt weird about opening it, like she's felt weird about expensive gifts since she was a child, but she was grateful, and she felt guilty because she didn't think she was doing an adequate job of showing her gratitude when she called them for the first time in something like three months, but that's all beside the point, because all it is to her right now is a means to

-- call her boyfriend and tell him what the fuck happened, as far as she knows, after he ran for his life.


When you're freaking out, wounded, tired, worried sick, five minutes feels like fifty. To an outside observer it probably looked like Alex was just being Alex, unable to keep still. All but twitching in bed, then thumping on the ceiling, then this, then that, then something, anything to try and keep his brain from unwinding long enough in its own stew of concern. When he finally sits down on the couch, he nods off almost instantly. His body takes over. It doesn't even try to tell him to chill the fuck out. It just crashes.

During that time, he doesn't hear his phone. Maybe he left it in the bathroom in his pants, forgot about it. Maybe it's close at hand, in case she calls. She does call, but it doesn't wake him, which says something about how zonked he is. The message, when he listens to it later, is short and simple, but doesn't tell him many details. Not over a mobile phone.

I'm okay. Everyone else is, too, except for one guy. He was one of Roach's, so... I have to stay at the church and deal with that. I'll be back as soon as I can. Get some rest.

The church. Maybe he'll laugh at her calling the Caern that, after he's heard the story and is checking his voicemail later. Who knows. Maybe the memory of falling asleep on his couch not knowing if she was fighting fomori or what-the-fuck will overshadow any chance of humor about her terminology.


The key turns, and the door opens quietly and closes quietly, because she thinks he might be sleeping and she doesn't want to wake him. She hopes he's sleeping, and that's why he didn't answer his phone. Her hair has streaks of mud in it, and there's mud on her face. There's mud coating her flipflops, her feet, staining her jeans all the way up to her knees. There's dirt under her fingernails, dirt up past her wrists, her hoodie sleeves shoved up.

Tonight she and Alex have, in turn, become covered in blood and gravedirt. Tomorrow she'll want to open the fucking windows, air the place out, get rid of the stench of terrified sweat and gushing blood and the memory of the smell of death by shotgun shell after shotgun shell. Smoke from the smoothie shop. A smorgasbord of foul odors lingers in her nostrils, and she just wants to be here now. She wants to go back to where she was before she smelled a wounded male, curled up on his bed waiting for him to come back smelling like the clean, healthy sweat of a workout and fucking her brains out against that rumpled mattress.

He's on the couch, and as soon as she closes and locks the door behind her, footsteps quiet but squelching, Sinclair knows he's awake from his breathing, from the fact that he moves just so. She stays quiet: "Hey, baby. Did you get my message?"

[Alex Vaughn] It turns out Alexander never hears his phone ring. He never hears his phone ring because his phone was in his gym bag, and his gym bag -- along with his iPod shuffle -- was in Juiceapalooza when he decided it was time to GTFO and, well, got the fuck out. Sinclair wouldn't have known that, though. Alex didn't even remember he had a cell phone, and won't until sometime tomorrow or the day after when he tries to call Sinclair.

So Alex worries. And minutes tick by like years, and he moves around and he paces and he hammers on the ceiling and -- then he drops off without meaning to at all, simply plummets down into sleep when his body decides that's it. That's enough. Time for a time-out.

Hours go by, the movie playing itself out on his huge TV, quite possibly the most precious thing in here next to that top-line drum kit. After the subwoofers go silent and the screen stops flickering, there's silence undercut by the faint hum of the DVD player, the occasional tic or thump resounding through steam pipes into the radiator.

And then the key is turning in the lock and he's snapping awake instantly, his neck sore where it fell sideways in sleep, the cut on his side a vague, dull nag of ache. He starts getting up as the door opens, but then thinks better of it. It's Sinclair. Who else could it be?

So -- she finds him on the couch. Sitting, leaning back, slouching a little; his balance shifted rightward to avoid compressing the wound on itself. He raises a hand and rubs at his face and shakes his head no and

suddenly he's smiling. It's slow, and it's tired, but it's huge and genuine.

"Hey," he says quietly, like he's sleeping in bed and she's snuck in late to join him. "You're back."

Just like she said.

[Sinclair] "Yeah," she says, and the word itself is like a hand going into his hair, fingertips rubbing on his scalp. But she's not touching him. She's still in the entryway, short as that entryway is, and she's still covered in mud and doesn't seem keen on tracking that everywhere when there's no helpful (read: slaving) Fianna kinswoman to clean up after her. She stands where she is, her ponytail no longer low and loose and laying over her shoulder but high and tight and messy as hell. Plenty of shorter hairs have come undone and hang around her forehead.

Sinclair unzips her hoodie, still wearing the little bird-bedecked camisole underneath, and nothing else. Most of her sweat has dried by now. She looks worn out, maybe kind of irritable, but overwriting all of that is sheer relief to be back here, like she's shrugging more than a jacket off of her shoulders. She drops the hoodie to the floor, steps onto it with her muddy feet, and then -- rather efficiently -- strips down, piling muddy and sweaty clothes on top of the mostly-clean jacket to keep everything together.

"You showered," she says, not because he's wet but because he looks different, and he changed clothes and looks like he doesn't feel gross and freaked out anymore. Then, with the faintest smile: "You slept."

Which is more important, apparently, then passing along what she said on the message he'll never get, now: "They killed all the fomori. One Garou died, a Walker I'm... to be honest, I know fuck all about him. He didn't have a pack. He was a gunsmith or something --" she shakes her head, as though to clear it of shit she tried to find out before doing his Gathering. She takes off her flipflops and jeans. Pulls off her camisole, breasts bare underneath, back arching. She stretches for a minute, exhales. Hooks her fingers in her flowered panties and drags them down, stepping out of them as she talks.

"They set the shop on fire before they got out of there and took his body to the Caern. So now he's buried and I looked on the net and III really want to shower," she finishes, taking her hair out of its ponytail.

There's still mud on her hair and face and arms and legs. With her hair down and raggled as it is, with the steel and titanium piercing her flesh here and there and the ink decorating her body and the hint of scars on her lower back just barely visible, it seems for a moment some primordial female has broken into his apartment, his time. She's wild-looking when she goes quiet, when her voice no longer makes her solidly a part of this era, when from a distance it's hard to tell if the markings on her are language or just designs created by some prehistoric mind. Naked, standing on a pile of modern clothes like one might stand on the conquered, ravaged body of an enemy, Sinclair looks very much like what he knows she is:

an animal.

[Alex Vaughn] Filthy, Sinclair comes in no further than the tiny entryway. So Alexander gets up after all, hiding a faint wince by rubbing his hands over his face and yawning into them. He comes to her as she's undressing, helping her pull her camisole off, kicking her flipflops aside into the tumble of athletic shoes and casuals that crowd the doorway.

"I'm glad," he says: she's back. He's glad. Simple as that, a couplet.

She gives him one of her own. You showered. You slept. He smiles again, "Yeah."

Then she tells him what happened. And he listens, and distantly he's glad that most survived, and distantly he's ashamed that he ran. But mostly he's tired, drowsy because it's the middle of the fucking night, drowsy because he can let himself be drowsy now.

When she's naked, he wraps his arms around her and leans into her and closes his eyes. He put on clean boxers after his shower. He put on a fresh undershirt, which is warm with his body heat now, dry and soft against her skin. For a long time, Alex just holds his girlfriend, his girl, his wolf-girl.

Then, "Come on. You shower. I brush teeth. Then let's sleep for a billion hours."

[Sinclair] Nevermind that she's covered in mud. Nevermind that he's clean, skin and clothes and bandages alike. Nevermind that she transfers some of that primal wildness of scent and being onto him when he comes over to her and wraps his arms around her. She doesn't care that he gets up, doesn't frantically try to get him back on the couch as though his legs were broken rather than his flesh torn. She welcomes him when he comes.

She sighs when he puts his arms around her, and then puts her own around his waist, just like they were in the bathroom before she had to throw clothes on and get out of there. Sinclair turns her face so that her ear is against his chest, closes her eyes, and makes a low, pleased growling sound in her throat. It's not unlike a dog craning its head into a scratch behind the ears, but it comes from the throat of a human-formed female rather than a canine.

Then it's quiet for awhile.

Then he tells her to come. They'll get clean. They'll sleep. She makes a noise that roughly translates to omfg, which is agreement in this case.

As they're pulling apart, leaving her pile of muddy clothes right the fuck where they are, Sinclair keeps her arms around him for a moment, holding him there. She looks up at him. "Thank you," she says quietly.

[Alex Vaughn] That makes him frown a little -- a stitch between his eyebrows as he pauses, does not draw away after all. When he answers her, it's just as quiet.

"Why?"

[Sinclair] "For living," she says, without agenda or overblown sentiment, keeping her eyes on his. Her own are somewhat crystalline tonight, glinting from weariness, so pale they're almost colorless. "For running while you could. For telling me what happened, because if it had gone differently after you left then there might be four Garou dead, and a handful of fomori doing fuck-knows-what to their bodies before anyone else could get there. Alex..."

It seems like she might try to explain that what he did actually was fucking sensible. But she doesn't. She just slides her arms closer around his waist again, closing what little distance has grown between them.

"Mostly for living," she whispers to his chest, her head bowed.

[Alex Vaughn] The first time she says living, she can feel him tensing. The broad sweep of his back tightening; the more delicate darts of muscle hinging arm to shoulderblade shifting. He doesn't let go, nor even draw away, but -- he tenses. Further, when she says for running.

When she's finished, he's silent for a while. Then, "I'm ashamed I ran."

That's very soft, so soft that she can't hear it vibrating in his chest even as close as she is. It's a whisper, unvoiced.

"I know there wasn't much else I could do. I know it was what I was supposed to do. But I'm still -- it still makes me ashamed to think of it."

[Sinclair] Instead of smoothing her hands over his back and telling him no, calling him Baby, coaxing him to let go, Sinclair just holds him as she has been. "I know," she says. "I get that, too."

And that's it. No forgiveness for it, as though it was a sin confessed and acknowledged to be objectively Wrong of him to do. No absolution for his shame other than what he might take away from the fact that she won't let go of him yet. Just that: she knows. And she gets it. Which may be why she doesn't try to tell him not to feel that way.

"I know it doesn't change anything," Sinclair goes on, and starts to draw back so she can take him with her to the bathroom, "but I wouldn't have... handled it well. If you'd died."

Her hand goes down his side and arm. Finds his hand. She turns to go down the hall, because there's another man's gravedirt to dig out from under her fingernails under a shower of hot water now.

[Alex Vaughn] This time, he's the one that holds her a moment longer. He says nothing now. He just tightens his embrace for a second or two, maybe three.

Then they're drawing apart. And he's meeting her eyes after a moment, smiling a little. It looks wan, which is unusual for him: he and his flashing shark grins, he and his surprisingly joyful grins when they're having ice cream cake, or playing the Xbox, or making love in the spring sunshine.

Their hands find one another. He follows her down the hall, which is all of about two steps. In the bathroom, he turns on the tap for her this time, and while she showers, he brushes his teeth. There are still some first aid supplies out on top of the toilet tank, on the edge of the sink and the bathtub. He puts those away, too.

At one point, he flushes the toilet, calling out a warning -- "Flushing! Get out of the spray!" -- before the shower goes burning hot for a few seconds.

When her shower's done, he's sitting quietly on the toilet lid, waiting.

[Sinclair] There's a flicker of fondness in her eyes, and a hint of a wince underneath it, when he reaches over and turns on the water for her. She waits for it to warm, though that isn't very long, and stays near him. She wraps her arms around him from behind while he gets out his toothbrush and toothpaste, careful to avoid his injury. A minute or so later she's climbing into the tub, closing the curtain and beginning what ends up being a pretty long time in there.

"Can't you wa--" is what she says when he tells her to get out of the spray, dissolving into a yelp as she dances back out of said spray. "You dick!" which is equal parts relieved, and familiar, and laughing, and exhausted.

It takes time to wash her hair and get the dirt off her body. She takes care with it, until she feels not only clean but relaxed, the soreness in her muscles easing quickly because she's an athlete and a killer and a warrior. It would be hard to assume she doesn't know he's there, given that she trusts her non-visual senses better than the average mortal, but Sinclair might not know Alex is still in the bathroom when she starts singing.

Total Eclipse of the Heart, to be exact, which is the first thing that's popped into her head, and gets stuck there.

She opens the curtain when she's done, wringing her hair out and swiping her hands over her arms and breasts and thighs to wick away the majority of the water. She's learned how to dry off fast after a shower. Little habits you pick up in a locker room, at least in her case. Seeing him, she quirks a smile. "Wanna throw me a towel or just dump me in bed wet like last time?"

[Alex Vaughn] There's precisely one towel bar in here, and it's by the toilet. Ridiculous place, if you asked Alex, but then there's literally nowhere else to hang it. There are hooks on the door, though, which is where Alex keeps a light waffle-cloth bathrobe -- and a second one for Sinclair, recently, though he's made no more mention of that than he did of the second nightstand -- but the bar by the toilet carries the towels.

He pulls a small one off and tosses it to her for her hair. Then, standing, he takes one of the large bath towels and approaches, wrapping it around her as though she were a child, or at least fragile, when he knows -- very starkly, tonight -- just how much stronger she really is.

"You so better not sing that song when we go to Easter Island," he says, smiling.

[Sinclair] "Nooo," she assures him, catching the first towel and ruffling her hair with it, squeezing her hair with it, because she has no intention of whipping it up into a turban tonight. She steps out of the shower and pulls the curtain closed again, draping the smaller towel --

well. Reaching towards the bar to drape the smaller towel over it. But then Alex is there, not tossing anything at her but holding an unfurled bath towel out like he's going to do exactly as he does. Sinclair looks quietly startled at that, but doesn't protest. She steps into the embrace of the towel, turning as he wraps it around her, putting her back gingerly to his chest and, frankly, hoping he puts his arms around her from behind.

Strong or not. It isn't even about being protected, being kept warm and safe. It's about the fact that tonight a fucking Full Moon took enough shotgun shells at point-blank range to absolutely obliterate most of his chest, and Alex has a gouge in his side, and that she knows more Garou would be dead if Joey hadn't been crushing talens on them to heal them one after the other, as fast as she could.

And Alex is warm and dry and safe in his snug little apartment, and that isn't how it had to turn out.

Sinclair turns her head, finds his bicep, breathes in. "I'll probably sing Iron Maiden instead. Or Mr. Sun, from Barney."

[Alex Vaughn] Alex does, in fact, wrap his arms around her after he's wrapped the towel around her. He ignores the faint grumble of pain from his side, which is literally growing fainter by the hour, and clasps her in his arms, leans into her, wraps her up tight.

He's stepped out of the little room-turned-alcove the toilet sits in. They're facing the sink, and the mirror over it, but he's not looking at their reflections. He's not looking at the way they fit together, almost matched for height; matched, in this form at least, for strength and athleticism and so many other things.

He's closing his eyes. He's holding her for a while, making a faint little noise of acknowledgment or amusement when she mentions Iron Maiden, when she mentions Barney. Then he lifts his head and kisses her cheek, or her temple, or whatever else he might reach easily.

"I'm glad you're back safe," he murmurs, which is the first time tonight he's referenced, or even acknowledged, that it was dangerous for her to go to Juiceapalooza. That he was worried about her. "Let's go to bed."

[Sinclair] If he weren't wounded -- and truth be told, that 'scratch', ugly as it is, will be gone in four days, a rapid healing process that has already begun with careful cleaning, bandaging, and rest -- Sinclair might want to sway where they stand, her wet hair leaving a small spot here and there on Alex's shirt and her body kept warm as it it dries by that towel and by this male. She doesn't sway, though. She doesn't want him twisting unnecessarily. She came over here hoping to get laid, preferably with the sort of athletic exuberance so often seen in their fucking, but right now she's content to fall asleep next to him.

Sinclair is exhausted. She dug a grave tonight, mostly on her own for awhile, and that sort of work gets harder the deeper you go, the tougher the ground gets, the denser the mud is packed. She had a little help, but no packmates came tearing into the Caern to bury their fallen brother. Hell. She found exactly one fucking person via GW.Net who might give a good god damn that Moving Mountain had died.

Live alone, die alone.

She's not just content to be here with Alex. She's happy.

Sinclair gets kissed. She smiles against it, eyes drifting closed. Her earrings nudge up against his cheek and jaw. Neither of them need to talk about how it was safe or not for her to go to Juiceapalooza. If she realized how badly he was worried she'd tell him she wouldn't have engaged the fomori without waiting for her packmates unless it was absolutely fucking necessary, and she can turn her fur into steel now, which -- on top of talens -- makes her that much harder to wound, much less kill. Shotguns or no shotguns.

She turns her head and kisses him back, nodding. "Yeah," she murmurs, and leaves the bathroom with him, flicking off the lightswitch as they go. Laundry tomorrow. Probably the biggest fucking breakfast either of them have had in a long time, if Sinclair has anything to say about it. He may very well discover in the morning that she makes a badass omelet, if you give her enough eggs and various forms of meat, veggies, and cheese. Also that she has an omelet-making dance that involves much hip wiggling.

His bedroom is dark, the curtains closed and the halved moon outside shielded from view. They close the door and Sinclair hangs her towel on the knob, fingercombing her wet hair, caring not one bit for the folk wisdom that going to bed with wet hair means a headache in the morning, caring not about a damp pillowcase, caring not that her hair will be bedraggled as all fuck when she wakes up. She just wants to get under the covers with Alex

which she does

and wait for him to get comfortable as he can before she settles in beside him, fitting her body to his as close as she can without risking putting pressure on his ripped-up side. She ends up facing him, their legs tangled, her arm draped gently across his waist. The last thing Sinclair does before she lets her head touch the pillow -- knowing as soon as that happens she's got maybe five seconds before she's unconscious -- is lean over and kiss his mouth. For as soft as it is, it's intense, and though it's just their lips that touch, it's somehow deep. Whatever it says, Sinclair doesn't echo. She lays her head down, closes her eyes, and almost instantly is asleep.