okay again.

[Alex] The setting sun brings out Alex's tan; makes his grin a quick white flash. He squeezes her hand in his, a bit of sand caught between a faint coarseness between their fingers.

"You bet," he says.


They split up before he hits the showers and changes out of his briny, clammy wetsuit. He gives her his address before then. He'll meet her there, he says.

And then they part. And for a while, standing in the lukewarm spray washing salt from his skin, Alex wonders if he imagined it all.


Then he hikes over to the self-storage across the street, where $39 a month buys him a wedge of space just big enough for a surfboard, some wax, and maybe a spare change of clothes. That's where the board goes; the wetsuit gets bagged up in a black garbage bag, hitched onto the back of his bike. One nice thing about a city with no winter: there's no such thing as months when riding a motorcycle is a dangerous affair, no such thing as getting stuck without wheels because it might be too snowy or icy outside. A motorcycle jacket and jeans are all he needs even in the dead of winter. In the warmer months to come, it'll be board shorts and muscle shirts on the freeway.

While he's doing this, Sinclair's finding her way over to his place. It turns out he doesn't live far at all -- just a couple blocks up into Pacific Beach, right along the shoreline. The area's a little ghetto: trashy lowriders on the streets, the unemployed and ungainfully employed loitering on the streetcorners. The ocean's a stone's throw away, though, probably visible from the second story over the roof of some little indie grocery mart that looks potentially rat-infested.

The apartment complex itself is indistinguishable from a thousand others of its sort so common in southern california; so rare anywhere else. Circa 1960s, two or three stories, flat-roofed and stuccoed, all its walkways and stairways are outdoors, and its main gate is little more than a formality: a door that opens from the outside, to the outside. The complex is arranged as a cluster of loosely connected units encircling a central atrium with some greenery that will brown out as summer sets in. A sizeable turquoise-blue pool that shimmers in the growing dark. The walls are painted an odd shade of pinkish-beige.

Every unit is single-story, the ceilings seven feet or so and pebbled. The unlucky ones face the north and get almost no sunlight, but Alex's is fortunate enough to sit on the southwestern corner. It's on the third floor, while she's waiting for him to show up she can wander down to the end of the exterior hallway, look out over the darkening sea.

The air smells like salt here. It's cool this time of year, but in the summer the afternoons will be warm and pleasant; they'll hear beachgoers just across the street and past the seawall.

When Alex shows up, Sinclair can hear him coming long before she sees him. He stomps all the way up the two flights of stairs, wetsuit in its bag splating against the stairs every few steps. When he bounds into sight, he digs his keys out of his pocket and tosses them at her.

"Like my digs?" he quips.

[Sinclair] It feels odd, parting ways on the beach as they do. Sinclair drops the bottles in a trash bin that she passes and Alex heads over to the showers. by the time she gets to the El Camino she's got a a text with an address. She doesn't sit around waiting in the parking lot but she does look for his bike. Smiles faintly when she sees it because she, too, was wondering for a moment if she dreamed that.

Except there's sand on her fingers that got there when he was holding her hand, and when she touched his hair. So there's that, too.

Sinclair drives a short while up to his apartment and huffs a laugh. The place he lives in is all but indistinguishable from the apartment Colfax has had for just short of forever; she suspects that the Walker who likes to pretend he's a Gnawer actually owns some of these buildings. He acts like a careless stoner; she knows a little bit better than that. It takes time and effort -- most of all Honor and Wisdom -- to become an Adren Philodox. It takes savvy to do it in a tribe like the Walkers, particularly Walkers like the ones living in this area.

She goes up and finds his door, but doesn't peek through windows or anything. She stands near the railing and listens. Not to the water but to whatever else she can hear: the people he lives near to. She sniffs a few times. Her senses are heightened, as though she's --

well, doing what she is. Inspecting, albeit in a casual and very still manner, whether or not this is a good den.

When Alex shows up, there's her El Cam in the parking lot, looking dusty, as though it did something like travel cross-country in a couple of days. There are her black fuzzy dice. There's the tightly snapped-down leather cover for the bed. It's dark now and the breeze comes along, ruffling her hair on her shoulders. He comes up the stairs, her eyes sharpen as he tosses his keys to her, but she catches them. She plucked a snowball out of midair once and tossed it back without missing a beat. She's the sort of athlete that could make a full-court shot if basketball was her thing. She huffs a small laugh.

At her feet is just a small red nylon duffel, the bare necessities. She didn't even bring up a pillow. Sinclair steps to his door after picking up that bag, unlocking it as he finishes walking down the walkway. She's smiling; he can catch that, looking at her in profile. The smile is one of pleasure.

"I do, actually," she says, turning the key in the lock, turning the knob on the door. But she doesn't push it open just yet, twisting a bit and reaching back, taking his hand in hers again. Then she pushes it open.

[Alex] Alexander's hands are warm from being in motorcycle gloves; warm because he's warmblooded, hotblooded, active, always On.

When the door opens, the apartment isn't still and silent, a haven of calm. The window's open, and the price Alex pays for his view is that his view opens onto the boulevard below. They can hear cars passing; they can hear pedestrians calling to each other. The vertical blinds, twisted open, tap against each other in the cool ocean breeze. Outside, the twilight still lingers in the west.

The floorplan is simple: a kitchen opening into a living room, windows on the far wall and to the right. A hallway to the left leads to a bathroom, a closet, two bedrooms, one door labeled with a DO NOT ENTER sign ripped from a freeway; the other equipped with a whiteboard stuck college-style to the door, a sign taped beside it: HOUSE RULES. Both bedroom doors are closed, but if the size of the living room, kitchen and bathroom are any indication, this place has barely more space than his Chicago crashpad.

And it smells vaguely like food inside -- some sort of casserole, maybe. There are dirty dishes in the sink. There are muffled voices, young, and what sounds like MTV blaring on a television inside the bedroom with the whiteboard and the sign. "Got a few teenagers staying in there tonight," Alex says, stepping out of his shoes. "A Garou and two kin. One of them's sixteen; the other two are like. Fourteen or fifteen. They're on their way to Baja. I think they're trying to reenact Y Tu Mama Tambien."

He goes bang on the door. "KEEP IT DOWN IN THERE!" he hollers through the door. There's a chorus of voices, two or three: "Sorry Mister Vaughn!", which makes him snort, turning back.

"They'll clear out by morning. If it bugs you, I can take myself off the safehouse database."

[Sinclair] Whatever lingering awkwardness is wrapped around them could have been intensified by walking into a still, silent, empty apartment. Nobody here but us chickens. No kids no pets no Tripoli to distract them. Sinclair sort of likes it when she walks in and the window is open and there's smells and sounds. She doesn't startle, though he didn't mention he had people staying with him now. Her eyes do go that direction though, momentarily and keenly aware of the presence of the teenagers.

Maybe they feel a chill go up their spines. Something inside the apartment, something breathing just past the door they're hidden behind, larger and darker and meaner than any of them likely have a hope to ever be. She keeps her hand in his, and it doesn't tighten, but she does look that way a moment. Not a long moment.

She turns to him instead as the front door is closing and he explains who's there. She grins. "I've never seen that," she admits, getting out of her shoes when she sees him doing so. She found a water pump to rinse off her feet before she left the beach; there's no sand in her flats, no sand between her toes. Their hands do part as Alex goes down to pound on the door and yell at the youths, which makes Sinclair laugh audibly enough that they probably hear it.

God only knows what they think, if they think at all: some new girl Mr. Vaughn's brought back for the night. Early, though, Jesus. The sun barely set like fifteen minutes ago.

He makes her laugh again when he comes back. She's dropped her little duffel by the door and, with a sort of frank lack of hesitation, puts her arms around his neck when he's close enough for her to do it. It happens naturally, easily, her forearms sliding over his shoulders and loosely linking behind his neck, her body coming closer. It's only when she's there that she realizes that this is the first time she's seen him in three quarters of a year and they sort of just got 'back together' and so there's a flicker of a pause in her eyes.

Doesn't pull away, though. Doesn't suddenly get uncomfortable because, in the end, she did it because she is comfortable. Because being At Home with him feels so right, so good, so equally familiar and thrilling, that she didn't even think about it. So he can see that flicker die as she tells herself she doesn't need to think about it. Or overthink it.

"Mr. Vaughn," she says quite seriously, "if it bugs me, I can just go scare them into shutting up." There's a pause, then. "I... never really cared that you weren't Eagle Scout for Gaia or whatever, Alex. But all the same, I think it's... good. I think if it were me, I'd rather stay in a safehouse with someone who was just doing what he could and not some Mary Sue who was trying to feed and clothe and educate and heal and mentor and blahblahblahblahblah."

She stretches where she stands, her arms and her back slightly. It's not a graceful arc so much as a taut twist that makes her vibrate a little before she relaxes again, exhaling. "It's good," she repeats, smiling at him.

[Alex] When she settles her arms around his shoulders, his link behind her waist. There's familiarity in that -- and newness as well. The first time in months. The first time in nearly a year, and

it feels the same. It feels wholly new. She can see that move through his eyes as easily as he can see it move through hers. Beneath her forearms, her wrists, his shoulders are sturdy and warm, solid through his shirt. He smiles, unabashedly pleased, when she comments on what he's doing here. Not turning overnight into a Respectable Kin; not making himself out into some Mr Mary Sue trying to feed and clothe and educate and heal and mentor and take care of all the problems in the world, ever, as though that would make him important finally. Equal, finally, to the Garou.

That was never the point. If anything, Alex finally letting go of a little of that chip on his shoulder, that combination insecurity and rebelliousness that had him refusing to contribute a thing to the war they were all embroiled in, that had him shying away from Garou who might have a snowball's chance in hell of claiming him, that had him picking fights with things much bigger and badder than he was. Not all of it, to be sure -- not even close -- but enough that he can look at his life and say,

okay. we're all in this together. and i might as well pitch in what i can, when i can.

He'd understand that new text on Sinclair's forearms. He might have his own spin on it, his own interpretation -- but he gets it.

"It's not like I'm running some big humanitarian thing here," he says. "Most times it's just roadtripping kids or something staying here -- if there's anyone here at all. A couple months ago a kin who was hiding out from his brother-turned-BSD crashed here for a few days before the tribe relocated him, though. So yeah, it makes me feel like I'm doing something ... good, I guess, at very little effort. I mean, it's like an extra two hundred bucks a month for another bedroom, and most of them try to pitch in when they leave. Chip in for rent and utilities or buy new sheets or cook or something.

"These kids made hamburger casserole," he adds. "It smelled vaguely edible, at least. We can heat it up and have it as an apéritif to Alex's Ramen Deluxe."

[Sinclair] "God, I love you," Sinclair laughs, the words a breath as much as anything else. It comes out heedlessly when he's done talking, her eyes bright with -- well.

With pleasure and comfort at being here. With amusement because of the MTV and the kids and the way he talks about what he can do, even if it's not much, but it's something and it does help. He knows it helps because these kids could be anywhere tonight. He knows it because some time ago he had a kinsman whose brother had turned into a chaos-worshipping, slavering thing of the sort that Sinclair is called to slaughter, and he knows it because there are a few people he trains now who show a little promise, a little gumption, a little potential for something more than butting heads with things they can't ever win against, or rebelling against the fact that they weren't born stronger, wilder, whatever.

Her eyes are bright with appreciation for the fact that he's doing it. And delight at the idea of having hamburger casserole before ramen. Hell, it's hard to tell if those words came out of her mouth because of what he said about the food or because of what he said about what he's doing here or because she's been aware of its truth for months now, or because of all of these things and the fact that his hands are on her waist, feeling her there again.

Sinclair doesn't freeze up after saying it, panicked that he's going to balk. She does get a little bit quieter. Watches him. Exhales, slower this time, not quite a sigh, and tips her head to touch their brows together. "I do."

[Alex] There's a flicker of surprise when she just -- says it. Not like a joke, not in irony, but in absolute, comfortable truth.

Then her brow is to his, and she's reiterating it, breathing it like that age-old vow couples have made to each other since ... whenever:

I do.

Down the hall, there's a sudden scuffle, a loud thud, peals of laughter. Neither of them yell KEEP IT DOWN IN THERE. It's possible Alex only did that out of some latent asshole sensibility. It's possible of all the people in the world, Alex best understands the concept of home not quite being a haven of quiet and serenity: behold, after all, the drum kit occupying a large chunk of the living room, right next to the ginormous flatscreen TV he's got hooked up to his XBox. And anyway, they're otherwise occupied at the moment, standing in the little foyer of his little apartment, blinds tapping in the background, hamburger casserole keeping warm in the oven.

"Yeah," is all he says to that in the end, quiet. He tips his chin up and kisses her again, softly now. "Me too, I think. I'm not really... one for profound declarations, but ... shit, it just feels right having you here again.

"It feels right."

[Sinclair] Sinclair breathes in when he kisses her, warmed by it from the inside out, like always. She doesn't mind the noise in the second bedroom; she liked the dorm-style whiteboard and House Rules sign and she likes that she knew which room was Alex's instantly by the DO NOT ENTER sign and she loves, in a fiery sort of way, the fact that she knew the second she walked in that soon she'd be sharing that room. That bed. That space. With him.

She loves that right now she's standing here and they're barefooted, arms around each other, quiet even though the second bedroom is loud and the street outside is noisy and the world is alive and stupid as ever regardless of the fact that there's this perfect stillness and warmth in the inch or so between them. Less than an inch.

It doesn't cause a pang in her when he says me too, I think. No sudden ache in her eyes, loss, grief, even insecurity. Far from it. She kisses him again, as she did on the beach, taking the softness he brings her and deepening it without quite... pushing. Without demanding. When their lips do part she finds his eyes.

"I'm sorry, Alex. For... the way things ended. For the fact that they ended at all." It's a small, simple apology. Just because she doesn't know if she's told him that she's sorry, too. Just to make sure it's said. Sinclair doesn't dwell on it very long. She glances over his shoulder at the hallway, then to his eyes again. Half-smiles. It's almost a smirk. "Guess putting on a skirt and riding you on the couch is out, huh? At least til my next birthday."

[Alex] Alex's eyes never flick toward the hall, the second bedroom, his young guests. They stay on Sinclair, stay there while he laughs, while he leans forward to -- well, smooch her, really, between the eyebrows.

"I'm sorry too," he says, though he doesn't sound sorry so much as he simply sounds glad. "Let's grab some dinner. You can help me make ramen, and then we'll take it into our room and put on some loud music and do whatever the hell we wanna to each other. Rap music. So if they hear moaning they'll just think it's Snoop Dogg bleeping out f-bombs."

He pauses. He grins - that sharp-edged white grin of his when he thinks he's done something oh so clever. "I'm so fucking smart," he says.

[Sinclair] He's not one for profound declarations. For all his bluster and noise and intensity, when they're together he seems the far more subdued of the two. There are at least half a dozen reasons for that, even after one discounts the fact that Sinclair is Garou and Alex is not. He's older than she is. He does all kinds of grown-up things like pay his own bills and rent his own apartment and such. He lives by a schedule, keeps himself in what, among humans, is pretty much pristine physical condition. And the truth is, when Sinclair says she loves him, she means all of that, too. That with him she can let go of some of the duties and responsibilities of a Fostern Galliard and be a goddamn twenty-two year old girl and find some kind of... anchor, at the same time, that keeps her from going off the rails into NotGiveAFuck-itis

In some ways he's so much more restrained than she is, and at those moments when she can separate that from her own insecurity, convincing himself that it signifies a lack of interest in her, it just makes her feel all the more comfortable with him. Safe. And it seems strange to Sinclair that she should be made to feel safe when she's with him. It isn't because she feels like she's not safe otherwise. But it's also not about the safety of her body, the security of her life and breath. It's a different sort of safety.

She's still smiling, softening at the edges as he kisses her forehead and makes plans for the evening and tells her how smart he is. "When did you suddenly get shy?" she asks him, grinning, giving him another soft kiss on his kiss in between words. It's a little sweet. It's a little bit explorative, the way they keep trading kisses back and forth like they're trying out how it feels. Forehead. Mouth. Jawline.

[Alex] His eyes close briefly to accept the kiss. His mouth is curved, lips closed -- smiling, pleased, rather quiet. For all his bluster and noise and intensity, he's ... quiet with her, sometimes. Finds a sort of peace and happiness with her that isn't really there in all the turmoil of the day. Alexander Vaughn is singularly convinced of Darwinian theory -- of the red queen hypothesis, of the eternal race and fight and struggle of life. But maybe not so much here.

He laughs, then, "I'm not shy. But there are unsupervised teenagers in the house, and I'm not gonna encourage the depravity any more than strictly necessary."

He turns in the circle of her arms, then, letting her keep them wrapped around his body as he shuffles over to the fridge with her. They're almost matched for height -- he's maybe an inch or two taller when she's in anything but flats, and barefoot, he manages maybe two or three inches on her. They're matched for athleticism and raw physical energy. In many ways, the well-tuned, firmly toned machine of his body is a mirror of hers. Even if Sinclair hadn't turned into a werewolf, she would've been some sort of athlete. Water polo, maybe. Swimming. Track and field.

"So," standing in front of the fridge now, peering in at the semi-barren shelves, "I'm thinking we can put some hearts of romaine into the pot, add a couple slices of smoked salmon, and have seafood ramen soup. How's that sound?"

[Sinclair] There's something to that -- the struggle outside, the fight, and the peace otherwise. For Sinclair, it's the War and the packs and the septs and the moon and all of it outside, Alexander inside. For Alex, it's a similar sort of relaxation. Hell, for all she knows that's part of why they had such a rough time: he never had to fight for her. Never had to win her. Just had to receive her.

And then the door to his apartment closed and she felt safe, and he felt happy.

She grins and kisses him again, fast and quick and light on the mouth, laughing with the sort of undercurrent of happiness that keeps coming up, bursting to the surface in the oddest of moments. "You're such a good example," she says, in a similar tone to the one he used to describe his extreme intelligence.

Sinclair laughs again as he turns, and her arms move from his shoulders and down, wrapping around his chest from behind. They walk, semi-awkwardly but not in any rush, over to the cramped little kitchen that's not so different from the one he used to have. The one they used to sometimes share. When he comes to stand in front of the fridge she rubs her foot gently against the side of his, the top of his, her leg half-wrapped around him. It's a small gesture before she perches her chin over his shoulder and looks at the fridge with him.

"That sounds like it will go wonderfully with hamburger casserole," Sinclair says to his suggestion for seafood ramen with overblown sincerity, and kisses the side of his neck. She lets him go, giving his arm a squeeze as she slides away --

and doesn't quite let go. Squeezes his arm, then opens her hand and caresses him, not even watching what her hand is doing as she glances at the oven, where the leftovers of casserole supposedly are. What her hand feels gets to her mind, and she turns toward him again, reaches for him again, putting her other hand on the back of his neck as she did on the beach. Kisses him like she did there, muttering a soft: "Jesus, Alex" as though he's done something, just before she melts a kiss into his mouth.

There's hunger in it. But she doesn't push. She kisses him, and opens her mouth to him, and then breathes in and withdraws, exhales, turns away to go looking for a plateholder. "I think my contribution to cooking this evening is mostly going to be sitting on the counter and helping you taste the soup," she informs him, without missing a beat.

[Alex] In some ways, it's strange how easily they've come back together. Not that the conversation at the beach was easy. Not that the time spent apart was easy. But there's no awkwardness, no sense of invisible rules or boundaries or What Is Okay and What Is Not.

He opens his home to her again. Makes it her home again with an offhand remark -- move back in -- and every moment, every gesture, everything he does when she's here. This apartment is a little big than the one in Chicago, but only a little, and mostly because there's a second bedroom. It's still cramped, and in truth even if they weren't being so damn affectionate, so damn warm and close and together again, finally, they'd probably still be squeezed together like this by sheer necessity.

She doesn't quite let go as he bends to get romaine lettuce out, and the costco-sized, half-eaten slab of smoked salmon. Alex-style ramen usually means whatever's on hand is thrown into the pot. Sometimes it turns out surprisingly well. Sometimes ... it doesn't, though he still eats it with the same enthusiasm, and announces just as often and just as loudly that he's an incredible cook. She's not thinking about that, though, and when he straightens up she kisses him, and there's a moment when the food in his hands is forgotten, the open fridge door is forgotten, and they're just

eating at each other's mouths the way they couldn't really at the beach. Because it was public. Because things were still tender and new, then.

When they draw apart, he laughs. "That's cool," he says, and the salmon and lettuce find their way onto the counter again. "Though if you wanna help me wash the lettuce, that'd be good too."


So that's what they do. Sinclair helps wash the lettuce while Alex gets the water boiling, checks on the hamburger casserole. They don't exactly have a three-course dinner -- they nom on casserole while waiting for the water to boil, and considering it's the effort of three kids and a box of hamburger helper, it's not too bad at all. While Alex is dropping lettuce into the pot, said three kids boil out of their room -- two boys and a she-cub who seems caught between shaking hands, bowing, curtseying and running the fuck away from a near-Adren of the Tribe so unexpectedly dropping in on her precious week of vacation before it's Back To The Academy for her -- and Alex adds another two cans of broth and three packs of ramen.

In the end they have a pot of filling, if slightly unusual noodle soup to go with 'burger casserole. There's no dining table, so everyone eats wherever they find room. After dinner the kids want to play on the Xbox. Alex hesitates visibly before grudgingly allowing it, warning them -- three or four times -- that if anything broke he was going to break their wee little heads.

As he's retreating back to his room, he grabs a few cans of soda, a bag of pretzels. Also, he surreptitiously sneaks an unmarked DVD binder off the shelf ... just in case. The hallway to the bedrooms is short, and affords a quick glance at the bathroom -- cleaner than Sinclair remembers, but possibly only because some previous guest had taken it upon themselves to give back by cleaning up. The bathroom looks rather impersonal, though -- there's likely another one inside the main bedroom.

The door to the other bedroom has a list of House Rules taped on it. Stuff like NO NOISE 10PM - 6AM, hinting at his sleep schedule, and CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELF and YOU BREAK IT YOU BUY IT and TAKE WHAT YOU NEED AND GIVE WHAT YOU CAN and CHECK WITH ME IF YOU WANT TO BRING GUESTS OVER. The bottom of the taped-up page has emergency contact info on it -- his cell phone, and the phone number of the Executive Kinfolk Liaison, both marked REAL EMERGENCIES ONLY.

There's a second page under the first -- a guestbook of sorts, it looks like. There's a good ten, twenty names on it already, dating back to late December.

Then it's through the door marked DO NOT ENTER, into the cozy-cramped space of his bedroom. He actually has a closet this time, so tiny that its door is half as wide as a standard. That door is open; the interior of the closet is as neat as she remembers -- except for that pile of laundry on the floor because the laundry basket is full of clean clothes. Next to the closet is a bathroom, even tinier than the one outside, but private. There's his brand of soap; there's his shaving cream, and his toothpaste, all exactly as she remembers.

He also has a bed that's not quite queen-sized, and one nightstand. He'll go out and get another tomorrow. There's his laptop on top of the nightstand, and across from it all is the window, the blinds open, the ocean outside -- dark now, only the faintest traceries of blue left in the sky.

"You wanna take a shower and then just crawl into bed?"

[Sinclair] The very last of the awkwardness seemed to leave them when they walked in here together. There were lingering traces of it, half-breaths of it, when they stood on the exterior hallway. It was there on the beach as they both wondered, he in the shower and she in her car, if it was all a dream. The change is inexplicable, the comfort undeniable. She feels as though no time has passed, suddenly -- it was those intervening months, or at least the pain in them, that were the dream.

She washes lettuce and he slices up some salmon and it's with a certain ache that she thinks of the fact that she feels as though she belongs here. She told Lukas that what she felt for Alex was something deeper than infatuation, more instinctive than the willful choice to accept, to care for, to love. She confessed that challenged for or not, official or not, every fiber of her being said mate. He more than anyone might possibly understand how she could feel more at home and more happy and more herself, suddenly, now that she's with Alex again. As though once found, there could be no replacing this, no substitute, no comfort for the loss of it.

Not because she doesn't love her pack. Not because she doesn't need them, too. But it's different, as different from this as this is from 'dating'. She washes lettuce and there's a moment when she's quiet, missing the wolves that are her brothers and sisters

and still knowing that if it came right down to it, she'd protect Alex above all others.

It hurts, thinking about the Unbroken. She even misses Sarita, so new but already so familiar, so much a sister. She reaches up and touches the ring where the feather is, feeling it against her fingertip and then exhales and looks over at Alex, who is getting in beside her at the sink to fill a pot with water. The smile she gives him then is warm, and quiet, and happy. She leans over and nuzzles his temple, kisses his cheek, and goes on helping him out. It's the last quiet moment for some time, because shortly thereafter, three teenagers are tromping in from the other room, tired of being holed up, hungry again and curious.

Sinclair -- perhaps mercifully -- mostly ignores the two boys, saying hi but leaving them as much room as one can in an apartment this size. She stands and leans against the wall, eating some warmed-over casserole while she talks to the she-cub. She gives her a couple of pieces of advice concerning The Academy, what she remembers of the Garou there and what she knows as far as loopholes, options, who to really talk to when you need X or Y. The girl relaxes a bit as Sinclair -- oh yes, near-Adren, doo dee doo -- tells her they'll put you where you excel. If you really dig something, if it feels right or calms your shit down, then work your ass off when you do it. They're watching, and they'll notice.

Sinclair chuckles when Alex hesitates over the Xbox as she's rinsing her own plates off -- she doesn't rinse anyone else's. She gives the cub a Look when she offers to rinse Sinclair's dishes for her. "Don't be weird," she tells her, and as Alex is grudgingly laying down some rules for the Xbox, she walks over to him and wraps her arms around his midsection. Partly just because she wants to. Something about the way she aligns herself to his back feels like a reminder, too. But that, also, is just because she wants to.

When they bid the kids happy gaming and head to the bedroom, Sinclair quirks a brow at the pretzels and soda, bites back a laugh at the way he pulls the DVD binder. She actually pauses in the hallway to glance into the second bedroom to check it out, reads the house rules and the guest list and then, after a moment of thought, finds a pencil and writes her cell number -- Chicago area code notwithstanding -- underneath Alex's and the EKL's. She puts her name beside it. Those who stay here will, more than likely -- or at least hopefully -- know what it's there for.

She may as well have labeled it Panic Button.

She doesn't say anything about it, and she doesn't make a big deal out of it. She doesn't hide it, either, even though she knows that it might set off that trigger in him, the feeling of being claimed. And she wouldn't blame him. In a way, she is laying some kind of claim: that she belongs here. That she's part of this. That if someone is in a position to ask for Alex's help, then in a very real and very animal way she views them as under her protection as well, however distantly. It's true even now of the kids in the living room arguing over what game to play: to a very limited degree, but one she takes seriously, Sinclair feels a sort of protectiveness.

She tries not to let herself think: this is my den now. they are not mine, but they are cubs in my den. nothing will hurt them. But the thought comes, and she finally lets it in, and walks into the bedroom with Alex.

So much like his old room it makes her smile. The bed. The window and its view, the little closet, the clean clothes in the basket, all of it. She likes his little bed. She can't remember them ever sleeping together without being entwined, almost always facing each other, arms and legs woven together. She slept like the dead regardless; she would often wake alone because she slept so much more than him, and see the warm indent where his head had been on the pillow they usually ended up sharing just because they'd be so close to each other.

Sinclair peels her shirt off even as he's asking her what he does, the loose, soft fabric fluttering to a puddle on the ground. Other than the new ink on her arms there's no new modification to her that he didn't see before; the tattoo on her hip his still hidden by her jeans, and she's facing him when she starts to strip, her back piece out of view. Her bra is plain cotton, matte black. There's a slight bump where the steel ring through her nipple presses through the fabric.

"I showered before I came to see you," she tells him, unbuttoning the top of her jeans as she watches him.

[Alex] It's the same, but not the same. That could be the refrain for all of this. Sinclair pauses to read the house rules, which seem hastily drawn up and then later amended as necessary. The first ten look like they fit together; the Ten Commandments of Alex. They start with quiet hours and they end with take what you need, give what you can. The ones under it look like afterthoughts added to address issues that arose -- stuff like Use haircatcher in shower! and Cover your food in the microwave! She can almost hear the first iteration of those rules, penciled angrily in before he got around to editing the Word file and reprinting the page -- FFS PUT THE DAMN HAIRCATCHER IN THE SHOWER DRAIN and MICROWAVES ARE NOT LITERALLY FOR NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS. COVER YOUR DAMN FOOD. Sinclair puts her name down as an emergency contact, and maybe she's expecting Alex to stiffen up or get uncomfortable, but

when she turns around he's smiling at her, a sort of quiet smile that's a touch wistful. He likes that she put her name down. She can see that plainly. If she asked him why -- and she might, later -- he'd think a while before answering.

Because it seems permanent, he'd say then. Like you're really here to stay.

And that's different from before.

How she treats the cub is different from before, too. Or at least different from what he'd expected. He thought she'd probably ignore the girl, much as he himself has been doing; leave the teenagers to their own devices unless they came to bug him. She doesn't, though. She takes the time to give her a little advice. Tell her what she remembers. Tell her without telling her, and without making a big deal or a Lesson out of it: I was where you were once, too. I was There, and now I'm Here.


Later, in the bedroom, she peels her shirt off without shame. There's a tiny flick of hesitation before he lets himself look at the skin she's revealed. Then he looks at her without shame, too -- studying her for what may have changed, what may have remained the same.

No new scars. That's the main thing, and it makes him glad.

His laugh is a little quieter now. "Spruced up for me, huh?" he teases, but it's gentle. Then he reaches back over his head and pulls his shirt off -- bright bloody red, stamped with the name of his new gym now that Tribull's been left behind. It goes into the dirty-laundry pile on his closet floor. His body is the same as it was on the beach, as it was the last time she saw it before that. Toned and taut, densely packed; his torso a solid, compact wedge, the musculature cut and defined, the tuck of his obliques sharp.

"I'm going to wash the salt out of my hair," he says. His jeans are old and rumpled -- quite possibly a pair she's seen him wear back in Chicago -- and they go into the closet too, leaving him in plain boxers, a sort of sandy blue-grey. There's a pause. "You can join me, if you want."

[Sinclair] "What are you smiling about?" Sinclair murmurs in the hallway before they enter his room, touching him idly, her hand on his side.

And he tells her he likes that she put her name down. She grins, her smile a bright thing in the dim hall, and asks why. And he tells her what he does, and so

they go into his bedroom that is already becoming their bedroom and will only be moreso when Alex shows up with a new nightstand from IKEA and another pillow in case she wants one and when she brings up some of her stuff and they go through the whole process of wedging her in with him. They go in smiling, and now she certainly is ignoring the presence of the teenagers who are playing games and will be gone by morning with no money left on the counter but a thank-you note and a (mostly) clean kitchen to try and pay Alex back.

Right now, Sinclair is undressing, unzipping her jeans and starting to peel them off, bending to push them down her legs. He's never seen a battle scar on Sinclair. He doesn't find one on her now. She can feel him watching her but doesn't instantly think that he's looking for that, but she looks up at him when she steps out of her jeans and sees him glad. Sees him laughing. He teases and she just nods quietly, stepping towards him. "I did," she says, an unabashed confession. "You hadn't seen me for months. I wanted to look pretty and smell nice."

Her panties are cotton, too, but -- perhaps due to the jeans she wore, perhaps out of some vain hope when she got dressed that he might see her undressed, though it's more likely the former considering how tense she was when she showed up -- it's a thong, deep purple, hugging her skin and cutting across the ink on her hip.

Sinclair comes closer but doesn't touch him yet, looking at him, too. She isn't looking for scars, though. She isn't playing any is-she-isn't-she game. She just looks him over, and then she smiles, and says: "I know." There's a pause. "Come on," she says, nodding towards the bathroom door, and heading that way herself.

[Alex] Alexander catches Sinclair's hand as she steps past him. They're both nearly naked now, down to their underwear. When he steps up behind her and wraps his arm around her middle, he feels for a moment like some calvin klein model, posing for a billboard, and laughs again.

He's laughing a lot. He's happy.

Bowing to her shoulder, then, Alex quiets again. He kisses the curve where her neck joins her shoulder. "You look pretty," he tells her; it's playful, and then it's simply sincere. "You smell nice."

He lets her hand go then. Both his arms wrap around her. He squeezes, and there's this to be said: he's never afraid he might break her. Never feels like he needs to rein his strength in, or his intensity, or -- any of that. With Sinclair, everything's full-throttle. The only time she ever seems hurt or frightened is when he holds back.

"I'm glad you're here," he says, and kisses her neck again.

[Sinclair] The first time Alex had sex with her, he laughed a lot, too. And not once, not a single time, did she feel that he was laughing at her, mocking her, holding something over her as she damn well knew he would have no qualms about doing with pretty much any girl he was with. He just seemed... happy. He seemed like he was really enjoying himself. Laughed when he played with her clit and she lost her mind. Laughed, breathy, when she asked him to go a little faster.

She remembers keenly, to, how he held onto the sheets for dear life when she came, riding her through it, holding still afterward, sweat pouring off of him from the effort of controlling himself as much as the exertion of fucking her. She remembers the sound he made when she told him she wanted him to come inside of her. To keep going. To fuck her until he came. She remembers the way it made her feel when he did.

"I know," she murmurs again, grinning softly as he comes up behind her and kisses her neck, but her eyes drift closed as she feels him against her. They can hear the Xbox and the teenagers; the walls are thin. She breathes him in, still smelling like the surf, and leans against his chest. For a moment she just rests there, feeling his warmth mingling with her own, and then her eyes open again.

"Me, too," Sinclair says. Yes, in spite of leaving her pack. In spite of knowing that every so often it's going to be real work for them both to remember that he actually wants her around and she isn't going to take over his life. In spite of all the months between the last time and this time: "I'm... really fucking happy right now," she finishes, and laughs at herself, stepping away from him only to bend forward and turn on the water to let it heat up. Turning back to him in the closet-sized bathroom, just an inch or so of space between them, she bends her arms back and unclasps her bra, slipping it off her shoulders and letting it fall just as she let her shirt fall, then her jeans.

Sinclair's eyes stay on his. Her hands, though, go to the waistband of his boxers, slipping underneath them to either side, fingers and then palms running down his hips.

"Really, really happy," she whispers.

[Alex] That last happy doesn't even really make it out of her mouth. Alex leans across the space between, quick and bright, kisses her so suddenly that it would be fierce, would be ferocious, if not for the smile she can still feel. The laugh that slips out between their lips, their mouths, when they part for a breath. He mmms into her mouth, nuzzles her jaw, kisses her neck and bends, bends all the way, to suck her nipple briefly into his mouth. The pierced one. That's one little detail he'd almost forgotten. One little detail that inflamed him from the very start.

When he straightens, he's grinning at her, him and his tanned skin and his white teeth and his dark hair mowed short, stiff and a little awry from salt. "Okay," he says, like he's laying out a plan, "let's shower extra fast so we can jump in bed and bang each other's brains out while the kids are distracted with the Xbox. Come on," and he reaches past her to pull the lever up, switch the faucet over to the showerhead, "go go go."

As she's turning to climb into the shower, he's pulling down her panties. As she's climbing in, he's swatting her ass, telling her chop-chop!, and then he's following her in, crowding into the little shower with the little tub that isn't quite full-sized, isn't quite as large as the one in the outer bathroom. No shower door here; just a cheap plastic curtain, new, quite possibly because the old one was too old to function. As he whisks that curtain closed, he reaches for her and pulls her against him, and

pauses, suddenly, thoughtful.

"I mean," he says, "if you're okay with it. Are you okay with it? We can just take it easy and ... zonk out or something tonight."

[Sinclair] His boxers fall to the ground as he's kissing her, and her hands stay on him, sliding up his sides. She gives the smallest, quickest moan when their mouths touch, stepping on the strap of her bra to get closer to him. Sinclair breathes in as Alex lets go of her mouth, a slightly plaintive look in her eyes, but then he's nuzzling his way down to her breast and taking her hardened nipple into his mouth, licking his tongue over the steel ring through it, and she gasps.

Sinclair watches him suckle her like that, shivering, and he might remember now how fucking sensitive she is, how her tits seem to have a direct line to every pleasure center in her, how on at least one occasion they laid out in bed and he fucked her with his hand while his mouth worked on her nipples and she came, grabbing the sheets and moaning as though he was inside of her,

hard.

That was a really long time ago, though.

When Alex straightens, Sinclair's eyes are a more intense blue than usual, the white-blue of a pilot light. She huffs a laugh at his 'plan', brilliant though it is, and bites back another groan as he peels her thong off her body, dropping it to the tile. Chop chop, he says, spanking her lightly, and she swats back at him, turning towards him as he's reaching for her.

I mean, if you're okay with it. Are you ok--

Sinclair is getting on her knees as the hot water hits him in the chest, running down his abdomen, touching her lips as they close around his cock. She groans, loudly this time, when she takes him in her mouth, as though she's the one being pleasured, here. She doesn't answer his question, if he even finishes asking it.

[Alex] As a matter of fact, Alex doesn't finish asking the question, which has become moot anyway. That's not why he stops talking though. He stops talking because Sinclair goes to her knees and opens her mouth and his are you okay-- turns into OH. and he has to clap his hand over his mouth, literally, to muffle it.

A moment later that hand is going back over his head, pushing through his short-mowed hair, gripping at the back of his neck briefly before coming back down. He slides his hands into Sinclair's hair, gently -- lovingly, one might say -- cradles her head as she sucks him off.

And he looks at her the whole time. Even when what she's doing to him make his eyes shut for a moment, makes him tip his head back involuntarily -- his eyes come back to her. He watches her, looks at her, keeps her in his eyes, in his view, until he can't take it anymore; until he pushes her gently back, raises her back to her feet, kisses her hungrily under that blasting stream of hot water.

"Turn around," he murmurs. "Turn around, lean against the wall, baby." He hasn't called her that in nearly a year. It rolls off his tongue as easily as it had the first time. "Bend over. That's right. Oh my god. There's that sweet little cunt -- "

and this time he's going to his knees, putting his hands on her ass, putting his hands on her hips to hold her still as he pushes his mouth against her pussy and, quite frankly, goes to town on her.

[Sinclair] The walls are thin but they're down a hallway and there's a couple of doors shut between them and the teenagers. The water is on full blast. But even so, that OH of Alex's would make it to their ears if he didn't cover his mouth like he does. Maybe his rap idea isn't such a bad one. He's heard how Sinclair gets. She knows how much he likes to talk, the shit he'll say when he's fucking her, and just thinking about it makes her groan again, the sound of it muffled not by her hand but

well, by his cock in her mouth. Her eyes are closed as he looks down at her, water clinging to her lashes. She gasps when he eases her off of him, her eyes flicking open to look up at him finally. Her hair is saturated by now, water running down her body as he kisses her. She's moaning when he does so, rubbing herself against his cock, whimpering when he tells her to turn around.

She's already getting noisy, every sound she makes telling him how much she wants him. How badly.

A flash of a smile hits her face, though, when he calls her baby. She kisses him right after that, hard and fast and almost sort of thankful. "I came so close to calling you that earlier," she tells him, laughing out her breath. Kisses him again, softer, and turns around, leaning forward, bending and bending until she's all but on display for him, biting her lip. There's nothing for her to grab onto for balance when his mouth gets to her pussy and he starts licking her the way he does, so her fingernails dig into her palms. Sinclair opens her mouth as though to cry out but barely, barely manages to hold it back, putting her hand to her lips and biting down.

The truth of the matter is, those teenagers out there are, no matter where they come from or what they like to do or how they were raised, obsessed with sex. Sinclair and Alex could be munching pretzels and watching Family Guy or something on his laptop and the teenagers would probably wonder if they were fucking. The hungry look Sinclair has all the time didn't help matters. The fact that the shower is running now means that there's about a hundred and ten percent chance, in those kids' minds, that they're very lucky Alex's apartment has two bathrooms. Sinclair could have said she was going to crash and wait for him to come to bed and, whether they said a word about it or even shared a Look or not, those kids would remain convinced: boning. totally boning.

Still. He talks about not encouraging even further depravity in the minds of the young. He takes his porn off the shelf to hide it from them. He talks about turning up the music so they're at least spared the sounds of Sinclair making those plaintive, eager little noises she does, or the groans and filthy words that come out of Alex's mouth. So Sinclair, bent against the shower wall and getting her pussy eaten out, tries at least a little bit to stay quiet. Until she's shaking, palms flat on the tile, her slick hot and wet on Alex's lips as he laps at her, her cunt clenching when he tickles her clit with the tip of his tongue.

"Baby," she gets out, trying simultaneously to pull away from his mouth and to grind against it. She doesn't get out what she means to say yet, gasping as he licks her again. Straightening up, finally, she turns around reaches for him, hands running over his shoulders, his arms, all over him, his cock if he'll just stand up and let her. Sinclair presses his back to the tiled wall, her mouth going to his neck, her hand stroking up and down his erection. "Finish washing," she gasps, as though he's even thinking about it anymore. "Finish... whatever, just fuck me."

[Alex] They're crowded together in that slightly-undersized shower: Sinclair turning around, Alexander getting to his feet. They're wet and hotskinned, her hands reaching for him, sliding over his shoulders and his arms, down his torso to where the smoothness of his skin is interrupted by that line of hair running down to his cock. She wraps her hands around him and starts to jerk him off -- shameless, mindless almost -- and he braces his hands on the wall behind her, laughs low and breathless, kisses her hard, slips a groan into her mouth.

"Okay," he says then. The next kiss is like a bite, comes in at an angle, fast and flashing. "Mmph. Go wait for me in bed, baby."

The shower curtain rattles back. Alexander finishes washing in seconds -- it says something about how meticulously he takes care of himself that he even bothers to finish, can even think to finish -- scrubbing his short hair out, rinsing himself clean. The bathroom is filled with steam, and it curls out into the bedroom as he comes out, toweling off, not even bothering to slow his pace as he beelines for the bed.

When he gets there he's halfdry at best. Water beads on his calves, and on his shoulders. He wasn't kidding about turning the music up -- he hits the sleep button on his clock radio and cranks it up, and both of them remember what it was like to be a teenager, and neither of them think for a minute that the kids out in the living room aren't 110% aware of what was going on in there, but still. Some sense of privacy or modesty or -- hell -- responsibility has Alex protecting their questionably-virgin ears.

Then he's whipping the towel aside, leaving it on the floor as he all but dives into bed. If she's under the covers, he more or less hauls them off the bed. If she's over them, all the better. In either case, the mattress is squeaking a protest as he crashlands beside her, and he's laughing as he pulls her over, pulls her on top, pulls her down to kiss her mouth.

"Okay," he says again, a different tone this time, a gleam in his eye. "Come on, baby."

[Sinclair] It is mindless. Shameless. Sinclair loves, craves the way Alex moves and looks and sounds when he comes. She flinches from him when he seems to hold back, and she so rarely does herself. She presses against him, closer, all but rubbing his cock against her belly and thighs while she strokes him, gasping kisses against his neck and his jaw and his mouth, finally.

She laughs. "I don't wanna leave you," she admits, without pause, when he tells her to go wait for him in bed. But her hand eases up a little on his body so he can use his mind, so he can turn around. She kisses his shoulder, touches him while he's washing his hair. She does, actually, leave him after a couple of moments. Before that shower curtain rattles back she presses a kiss to his shoulder,

slaps his ass,

and grabs a towel to scuff over her hair and skin while Alex is rinsing himself clean. Sinclair wrings out her hair and tosses the towel back over the bar, going into his bedroom. She's only just crawled onto the mattress, atop the covers on her hands and knees, bending her head down to sniff at his pillow, his sheets, inhale the rich scent of him. Sinclair stretches like a cat, arching her back and working tension out of every muscle that long, keen stretch can use.

Water shuts off and she looks backward, over her shoulder, eyes glinting as he comes out, comes towards the bed, losing the towel and flicking the dial on his clock radio. Sinclair flops to her side, and rolls over onto her back, and he can all but see in her eyes the way her heart must be beating when she looks at him, so much different than the way she did when she was a virgin. Now she knows exactly what he can do to her. What he's going to do to her.

Sinclair laughs as he crashes into bed, and they're reaching for each other at the same time, pulling at each other. Sinclair shivers at his hands going up her arms. The pillow is wet from her hair. They don't mind. She finally hooks her leg around his hip and swings herself atop him, astride him, as he's rolling onto his back, holding her hips to steady her.

Water cools as it drips down onto his chest. Sinclair bends to him, and thanks to the blaring music he can feel more than hear her gasping. She opens her legs, pressing her cunt against his cock, rubbing herself on him -- no. Grinding, slow and gentle but grinding nonetheless. This time he feels instead of tastes how wet she is, how different that slick heat is from the water still clinging to her skin and hair.

There's no pause, no mention of getting a condom. Either she's still on birth control or she's forgotten or she's decided that she wants to get pregnant after all and doesn't think he might want to have a heads up -- though Alex probably knows without having to think about it what the most likely option is. Sinclair moans as the feel of his cock sliding over her pussy makes her hotter, makes her wet all over again, makes her rub faster against him. There's not a lot of conversation this time. It's been awhile -- longer than awhile -- but Sinclair hasn't forgotten everything. She doesn't stop kissing Alex when she reaches between their bodies and takes hold of his cock. Her mouth parts from his only briefly when she guides him towards her opening, her eyes finding his for a moment, whispering:

"Slow."

as she starts to work herself gently onto him, rocking her hips a little with each fraction of an inch. She's tight -- as tight as he remembers, maybe tighter. If she hasn't been utterly celibate since the last time she was with him, it's obvious enough that it's been a long time for her.

And really, the question itself doesn't matter. What matters is that look on her face when he starts to fill her, stretching her out, and the way her hands dig into the comforter and into his shoulders as she moans.

[Alex] It would be overly simplistic to say what draws them together is the fact that when they're in here, in their room, in their den, away from the eyes of the Nation and the world, they can be themselves. They don't have to put up a front. They don't have to be on their toes all the time. She doesn't have to be an almost-Adren Galliard from a respected pack. He doesn't have to feel like every ounce of respect he gets is a struggle.

It's overly simplistic to say that's all there is, because it's not, and never was. But that's part of it. The fact that here she can just be a twenty-two-year-old not-quite-girl and he can just be the not-quite-guy that's her boyfriend -- the fact that if they tumble into bed like this together and roll around and romp with each other until she's straddling his hips and working him inside of her while music blares from his crappy clock radio

like they were at college still, like they have to be semidiscreet for the sake of the flatmates,

is nice. It's nice not to have to strain all the time. It's nice to be able to let down that guard, once in a while.

Slow, she says, and a grin breaks over his face; he leans up to her and fills his palms with her pert little breasts, tugs gently at her nipples as he kisses that word off her tongue.

"Okay," he says again. His hands come back to her hips. He leans back and she starts to ride him, and the look on her face -- like magic -- reflects onto his face, reflects onto the tip of his head back, the closing of his eyes. She moans. He says mmm. She grasps at his shoulders and he grasps at her hips, squeezes her ass.

"That's it," Alex whispers; it's almost more read than heard, his lips moving in silent hieroglyphics. "That's it, that's my girl. Oh, yeah."

[Sinclair] The loud music covers a great multitude of sins, including those of lust and fornication, but perhaps the greatest benefit is to the couple in the bedroom and not the trio of teenagers down the little hallway. They can't hear the Xbox or the kids' laughter over whatever station Alex keeps his radio tuned to, or the sounds Sinclair tends to make when she's fucking. When she doesn't know what to do with herself.

There's going to be a lot of that in coming weeks, Sinclair not quite sure what to do with herself. Teach Will to take care of himself. Try to get in with the sept and get them to get their shit in order, try to teach who she can that they can't treat cubs like they treated her, or like they're treating the girl in the other room, that Princess Leia had it right with that metaphor about the tighter you hold on the more will slip through your fingers. But the rest of the time, directionless, she'll be wandering, and it's going to be there in his home, in his bedroom, sharing a kitchen and a bathroom with him all over again.

Being able to be alone with someone with whom she can talk about how that kind of sucks is going to be important. And having a place to go where she isn't a Warcry bringing Brutal Revelation to whoever has ears to hear -- that will be invaluable to her sanity. Even if sometimes he's rubbing her back and she falls asleep on him because of it. Even if sometimes the ability to just relax with him is, it self, something they both have to put effort into making work, into keeping from taking advantage of each other.

What they can let go of when they're alone together isn't everything, but it's a lot. Letting go of the last several months, for one thing, is vast.


Sinclair shudders when Alex touches her breasts, her mouth opening in a silent cry as he strokes the slightly calloused pads of his fingertips over her nipples til they're hard little peaks. She doesn't even have him fully inside of her yet and she's clenching down on him, quivering. Doesn't stop, though. Doesn't stop moving him slowly, slowly into her, gasping the deeper he goes, putting her hands on his chest as though to steady herself.

Soon, though, she's sinking down until she holds him inside of her, and she doesn't start rocking on him immediately, riding him like a goddamn pony, bouncing herself into orgasm as though that's all it ever was, all she needed from him was to fuck, get off, have a grand old time between two sleek, athletic bodies. Sinclair's hands slide over his chest and shoulders as she folds down over him, opening her mouth to swallow the utterances he's letting go of. That's it. That's his girl.

Pressed against him like that, he can feel her gasping when she tilts her head back, then bows it forward across one of his shoulders. He can feel every muscle from her hips to her upper body as she starts to work herself on him, grinding on him, letting out a gasping sort of cry every time his cock pushes back into her. Sometimes those cries sound almost like his name.

[Alex] So at first it's just that: just Sinclair moving on Alex, Alex's arms around Sinclair. His eyes on her, intense and dark in the lamplight, gleaming with pleasure, and with --

well. Joy, perhaps, is the word. He's happy she's here. He's happy she's fucking him. He's happy this is still the same, that she still makes those little sounds, that she still stays close, wants to be close, holds onto him and utters those gasping little moans that sometimes, sometimes, sounds like his name.

Without warning he leans up and kisses her. Without warning he wraps his arms around her, clasps her tight to his hot chest, lets out a laughing sort of groan as she winds her hips down on him; lets out a groan, period, as he rocks his hips back up against hers. Then he's drawing back, leaning back against the headboard, space opening between so he can look at her, look at her body, look at her eyes.

"That's it," he breathes. He keeps breathing, keeps reminding himself to breathe, breathe, breathe even when his eyes close at the way she moves her body. "That's it, baby."

When she starts to go a little harder, his hands come to her waist, hold her there as though to steady her as she starts to ride him. Slow, she said, and slow is what this is, even now: steady, luxurious, drags and slides and his mouth finding hers again. Exploring. Opening.

Parting. Saying, "Faster. A little faster, baby."

[Sinclair] It's pretty dark in here. The sky outside is dark and the lamp isn't too bright, is the sort of thing you turn on not to find your way to bed but to read when you're in there. It's on so he could show her the room, but it's still on so they can see each other. It's been too long to fuck in the dark, under the covers, their bodies hidden in shadow.

Maybe later, though. Maybe when that last light goes off and Sinclair is curling towards him beneath sheet and comforter, twining her legs with his. Maybe even then their hands will reach for each other, slide over each other, discovering each other by touch without sight. This time, though, Alex has the lamplight to watch her by, and Sinclair can see the way it glows warmly on his skin -- when she can keep her eyes open. When she can lift her head enough from moaning into his shoulder to look at him.

Which she does after he kisses her like that, a kiss she groans into while her hands try to steady her, keep her anchored, as the way he kisses her sends the world reeling. She's not quite working up a sweat yet but he can feel the feverish heat of her body under his hands. And he can feel the way she loses herself in this, see it in her eyes when she looks at him like she can't remember her own name or where she is but she knows him, knows she's with him, knows that's all that matters right now.

There are times whe being the utter focus of Sinclair's ruthless attention is petrifying. And then there are times like this, when she's lifting herself up from his chest to give him a long, hard grind in a slow circle of her hips on his, watching his hazel and gold eyes flare and close with sensation. There are times when it's not about being the center of her world but being in the center of her, standing with her on the surface of the sun.

Sinclair doesn't need to, but she leans over him, hands flattening on the headboard as though for balance, and looks down at him as she starts to move faster. Not quite harder but with quicker, lighter strokes of her hips, gasping in her own right at the difference between that and the slow grinding of a moment ago. Her head tips back for a second, mouth open to breathe, and then she laughs softly, finding his eyes again.

"God, I missed this," she tells him, the way she's moving now making the ring through her nipple bounce gently every so often against her breast. "I missed fucking you so much."

[Alex] And that makes him laugh too -- a quick breathless huff of it before his mouth is on hers again.

And then on her breast, catching that ring between his teeth, tugging it for a single instant before he lets go again. Closes his mouth over her nipple instead and sucks at her, ferociously, wanting to make her cry out even as he's wondering if that clock radio was really loud enough, had enough resonance, to drown out the noise of what they're doing in here.

Probably not. Probably not quite. But who the fuck cares; the kids out there are probably debauching themselves every minute they're not in sight of grownups. A group of teenagers, someone's daddy's car and a week of roadtripping through mexico: Alex remembers the days.

Alex doesn't remember what day it is right now. The world narrows down to this focus, this intense, searing moment. His head lifts from her breast; his hand wraps behind her neck and he kisses her again, burningly, before he arches up under her and flips her to the side, turns her on her back and moves over her, all hard agility and boundless energy.

"Liar," he quips gently, sighs as he slide into her again, opens his eyes and grins at her, "you just missed my ramen."

And he kisses her again. It's a little more aggressive, a little more playful; he bites her lip as he draws back. "Now hold on, baby," he tells her, bragging, still cocky, still Alex fuckin' Vaughn after all this time, "because I'm totally gonna make you come."

[Sinclair] Even when Sinclair lifted herself up off of his body to ride him, Alex followed. Followed her body, her breasts, her mouth upward til he was half-sitting, half-leaning in his bed, where he could always reach her. It matters; matters because it's been so long, and because she missed him so badly it was killing her, matters because once they got in the door she didn't want to be more than a few inches away from him if she could help it, didn't want to have to do more than reach out in order to find him, feel him again.

Be close to him again.

The ring is smooth and warm on his tongue. Sinclair's nipple: less smooth, twice as hot, a soft little bead of flesh in his mouth when he sucks at her. She grabs at the headboard, fingernails clawing downward into it, and she does, in fact, cry out, loud enough to perhaps cut through the song on the radio, maybe loud enough to reach the ears of the teenagers. But frankly, this bed isn't some expensive piece of furniture from Italy, and the rhythm of what they're doing in here is set by the noise that makes as much as by their voices. There's the creaking. The gentle smack of the headboard. The pairing of the bed's protests with Sinclair's wordless encouragements that sound so very much, nonetheless, like

yes, yes, yes.

Or, like now, more like a savage snarl of pleasure as she bucks her hips and grinds them down against him, all one hard, fluid motion. He can feel her clench on his cock, feel how wet his mouth is making her, how wild she is. Makes him fuck himself up into her a little harder, makes him grab her and kiss her and roll her over in bed, roll her under him and open her legs up to get inside of her all over again.

Sinclair. Gasping, wet, hot-skinned Sinclair wrapping those long legs around him and hooking them up over his hips, stroking her palms up his chest with a feral glint in her eye that is more lustful than hungry, appreciative in a vicious, proud way. "N--oh," she says, one word and another, as he's pushing his cock back into her pussy, stretching her out again, finding her tight around him, squeezing him. For a moment her eyes drift closed, and she just gets used to him again, fucks him with little rocking motions of her hips again until she can remember herself enough to open her eyes.

"I missed your cock," she breathes, looking up at him again. "I missed your body."

He comes down, kisses her again, and she reaches for him, finds his hand, pulling it to her breast even as she eats at his mouth, gasping against his lips. What he says makes her grin, makes her pant out a laugh. Makes her raise her arms and grab a hold of the top edge of the mattress she's lying on, her body stretched out and arched under him. And maybe if she were another girl this would be a competition: who can make the other come first, who can Win the Game, who has the upper hand while they fuck. And if she were another girl, he'd find some way to make it him. To win. To come out on top, regardless of where he was lying.

This is Sinclair, though. Laying herself out to enjoy him. As though, when he says he's totally gonna make her come, she's saying in return: go right ahead. But it's there in the fact that she's still fucking him back, taking him in, looking up at him and telling him in a quiet enough voice that he can hear it under the music, telling him what she doesn't want anyone to hear, tell him a secret:

"I missed feeling your cum inside me, Alex," Sinclair mutters, her legs folding tighter around him, pulling him in harder. "I missed you fucking me til you lose your fucking mind."

[Alex] It was always an athletic event, their fucking. From the very first time in that sunbathed room in Rio, to all those times she bounced on his lap in his tinytiny little apartment in Chicago, to here: athletic, playful, even when they're going slow. Even when they're being -- well.

Tender. An undercurrent of sweetness. The things she says. The way she says them. The way his eyelashes meet his cheek as he leans down to kiss those words off her mouth. Their bodies rock together, steady as the tide, slow and rolling, on and on.

"I missed you," he whispers back, a confession for a confession. "I missed you so much."

Then his hands push up her torso, squeeze her breasts gently, mold over her shoulders and up her arms. He finds her hands there at the edge of the mattress, and his fingers slide between hers; grips the bed through hers. He levers himself up a little, gives himself the room, the leverage, to fuck her just like that, just the way she likes it, just the way he's missed, all this time.

They're not really trying to be quiet now. The latest top 40 crap is, blaring from the clock radio and the mattress is squeaking and thumping and Alex catches Sinclair's mouth on his, eats those cries right out of her mouth as he fucks her, goes at her quick and hard now, slow a thing of the past.

Still close, though. Still keeping his body close to hers, close enough that she can feel the flexion in his lower abdomen, the movement of the muscles beneath his skin, between her thighs. Oh, my god, he seems to be saying, but his mouth is pressed to hers and there's no way to tell the words from the moans. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my fucking god --

He wraps his arms around her at the end. He clasps her so very tightly against his chest, and she can feel all the carefully, meticulously cultivated power in his body -- that body that, by nature, would only be average, possibly even mediocre, that he's carved into a machine of fitness and strength out of sheer determination and stubbornness. She loves him for that. For the fact that, nice guy or not, sensitive sapfaced sweetling or not -- definitely not -- he's strong. He's determined. He doesn't give up easily,

but he gives himself over to her like this, is hers now, was hers from the moment her body or soul or spirit or something recognized him as such -- gives himself over again, clutching at her, slamming into her, grunting and panting and groaning against her neck as he comes into her.

[Sinclair] They work up a sweat. The heat they share dries their skins and then wets them all over again, mingles with her slick where she takes him inside. It isn't hot here yet; when summertime comes and they fuck with the windows open they might try harder to be quiet, to not alert the entire neighborhood to the fact that he's got her bent over the bed, eating her to a screaming orgasm, making her clutch at the sheets and pillows the way she clutches at the mattress now.

For a moment, though, she lets go. Wraps her arms around him as much as her legs, holds him near her when he whispers to her what he doesn't moan aloud, what he's borderline unable to say when they're just talking on the beach without working up to it, qualifying it, trying anything to just not sound so sappy. This doesn't sound sappy. It doesn't sound like anything but what it is.

I missed you. I missed you so much.

Sinclair wraps herself around him and holds him, kisses him as he moves into her, working back up to pace in long, sinuous flexion from shoulders down his back to his hips, tension in his thighs pushing him into her again

and again.

Her hands rise up his back, stroke over the defined musculature, and feeling it, she shivers. Opens her eyes, reaching up and back again to hold on, just like he told her to, just like his good girl, because he's going to make her come. She writhes, looking at his hand when it cups over her breast, strokes her there, squeezes. The feel of it makes her squirm on his cock, rubbing her clit against him. "God, I love it when you play with my tits," she gasps to him while she works herself on him, the words tinged with a moan.

Their fingers weave together, her knuckles to his palms, his rougher digits finding a home between her longer, softer ones. Sinclair feels him push himself up a little and moans in anticipation, remembering -- after all this time -- how it feels. What it means. He's going to give it to her now, faster now. And she's forgotten why they have the music so loud, or that there's anyone, anything beyond this room. She can't even try anymore. Her head tips back, her throat bared without any need to get past some worry that it will seem submissive, without animal resistance to it, opening her neck to his mouth because it feels so good

but not as good as his cock starting to fuck her like that. He's worked her into a sweat, has the smell of her arousal in his nostrils and the taste of her pussy and her skin still on his tongue, and she's got him so deep inside of her and so warm on top of her that his body may as well be as close, as known, as vital as her own. Now she is saying his name, always like there's more, like she wants to tell him she loves his fucking arms, she loves his chest, she loves his dirty mouth, loves how eager and strong and shameless he is when he fucks her, but all she says is

Alex, Alex, Alex

and oh,

and sometimes it's nothing but meaningless, wild vowel sounds, outcries that reach past the room and erase all doubt or ignorance of what they're doing or how goddamn good it is or how close she is to coming. He can feel her body tighten up where it's stretched under his own, and he can feel her clutching at the mattress the way he likes to think of her doing -- or did like to think of her doing -- when he'd jerk himself off. Sinclair sucking his cock like she did in the shower. Sinclair holding on for dear life while he pounds her, like he is now. Sinclair moaning the way she does when they fuck nice and slow, like they were before he flipped her over to make her come.

Sinclair coming, arching up to press her body against his, hips to hips, stomach to stomach, breasts to his chest. "Alex!" she lets out, a hard cry turned plaintive, pleading. Her hands let go of the mattress suddenly, turn, holding onto his when her orgasm overtakes her, running like electricity under her skin, a shot of liquid lightning melting her to him at the point where their bodies meet. She comes, clenching and quivering around his cock

and he comes, twitching and jerking and pumping inside of her, filling her, joining her.


As they could tell what Sinclair and Alex were going to get up to as soon as they heard that OH! he let out in the shower, the teenagers know exactly when it is that Sinclair and Alex finish fucking each other. No matter. The creaking of the bed slows and silences as their rocking together gentles to stillness, and her moans turn to pants, then gasps, then deep, heavy breaths that are nonetheless mostly quiet. Sinclair runs her hands down his forearms to his biceps, wraps him up in her arms to hold him as she comes down.

She closes her eyes, turning her face to his neck, catching her breath

when every single one she takes is scented with him.

[Alex] In the dizzying aftermath, Alex is scarcely aware of gravity, of up and down, of light and dark; anything other than Sinclair's arms and legs around him. Sinclair's heartbeat fast, fast beneath his lips. Sinclair's body clenching around him, shivering and shuddering in waves.

I'm here, he thinks to himself. His thoughts are coming back together so slowly. I'm here. I'm here.

His eyes opening: And so is she. And so are we. We're here.

Together.

His eyes close again. He turns his face against her neck, nuzzles her heavily, mindlessly. Catches the delicate skin there between his teeth, gently, a nip before he lets go. And wraps his arms around her a little tighter. And flexes into her, drawing a groan out of himself.

I missed you, he said earlier, whispering it like it was too secret to give voice even here. He thinks it again but doesn't say it. Instead, he rubs his face against her skin again, more, one animal to another.

When he smiles, she can feel it.

"Say it again," he whispers. "Say you love me again."

[Sinclair] The music on the radio is still thumping, the Xbox in the other room is still giving them noises of explosions and the teenagers are still giving out bursts of laughter. Sinclair is panting softly, her legs rubbing against him gently, calves stroking his flank. He flexes into her; she arches a little to take him, moaning past his ear. It sounds sort of welcoming. Answering.

While he's nuzzling her, she's laying back on his pillow, wet from what dampness was left on their bodies and her hair from the shower. Her eyes are closed, head tipped back to receive him. She turns towards him though, when he nips at her, and rubs her face against his, nuzzles him. It's one of the only times tonight she's done anything, said anything, that truly felt like some kind of claim. The word mine never leaves her lips. The way she nuzzles him in return, though:

mine. my male. mate.

Her eyes slowly drift open, eyelashes brushing his cheek, eyes lazily searching for his. Finding them, a summer-sky blue to his earthy, warm near-gold. She sees him smile and a match for it flickers on her lips, drowsy and slow and...sweet, really, almost shy. Happy. Happy, more than everything else he could find in that smile.

"I love you," she whispers. There's no hesitation in that, and her hands run over his sides and across his back to hold him that much closer. She exhales, and smiles again, a grin though her voice remains hushed. "I love you a lot."

[Alex] There's not much left in Alexander's daily behavior, his manner, that suggests friendliness. That suggests warmth, and welcome. The potential is there in his eyes, though. Was always there in his genetic makeup, his background, who he was Supposed To Be.

Once upon a time, the Vaughns may have been Fianna the same way the Sinclairs may have been Fenrir. Trace his muddled ancestry back far enough and he's got some scots blood, some irish, some german and some dutch and some italian and some english, but the majority of his people come from the mountains and seaside cliffs and moors of Wales.

Passionate people, the Fianna. Hearty, hospitable, welcoming; but so quick to anger, with a memory for grievances that dragged longer than lifetimes. If it really is Fianna blood somewhere in his veins, then the memory and the anger are certainly wore on his sleeve. The rest of it though -- the joy and the hospitality, the warmth and the welcome --

that's something only Sinclair's had the chance to see. Something shared between them, secret.

Secret as the way he smiles. Secret as the way he lifts his head and kisses her -- soft, sweet. When he says it back to her, it's not as a too or an also or -- any form of reciprocation.

"I love you," he whispers.


That's it. It lingers for a while.

He shifts a little, then, moving halfway off her, laying himself out beside her. Their bodies are still joined. Their legs are entwined. The pillowcase is damp, but he doesn't care. They smell like clean, athletic sweat -- like his cheap shower soap, and very faintly like the sea.

"I'm glad you're back," he murmurs. His hand comes up to cup over her breast; his thumb sweeps a slow arc over its curve. "And I'm glad you're staying.

"But if you ever go back to Chicago... or Kansas, or whatever... I'll come with you.

"You know that, right?"

[Sinclair] There are parts of each of them that are hidden away from most people. Not traits they just keep to themselves until they know someone well enough to let them in, but aspects of their personalities that even they didn't seem aware of until they met each other and they bubbled to the surface as though of their own volition. Alex's warmth, his friendliness, a sort of abundant joy inside of him waiting for expression. Sinclair's tenderness, her sweetness, her... sheer girlishness, which not even her packmates were really privy to. She can't hold it in when she's around him. Doesn't want to.

And maybe her last name is Norman French, and maybe that is some hint as to her more ancient lineage. Look at her father: he may be gruff without much true wrath to back it up, but he's a tall, sturdily built man for someone who ended up going into academia. Look at her mother: the flaxen hair, the almost ferally intelligent eyes. Look at Sinclair herself, either when her hair is braided up across her head like a crown and she seems like a freckled milkmaid

or when she's standing in the middle of the bloodied bodies of enemies, her breath steaming in the cold.

Oh, well. They are what they are, and if he has some sort of genetic predisposition to his temper and his grudges as well as his hospitality and friendship, then Sinclair may in fact have something in her blood of strength and savagery right alongside an overwhelming sense of family. Of loyalty. These things she wears openly. Almost no one she knows would understand -- she thinks -- the desire not just to protect but to be made and kept safe, herself. The desire to have stupid, normal fights that aren't about mateship or honor or offending other Garou but about whose parents were more annoying at which holiday. The desire to curl up in bed after eating ramen and just ...be a girl. With her boyfriend.

Fucking, sure. Laughing. Nuzzling. Cuddling. Saying little things to each other, murmurs of affection and endearment and promise they might never say unless they were naked and sweating and conjoined. She missed him so much. Truth is, she also missed the part of herself that had room to exist, to thrive, with him. With only him. She didn't know how hard it would be to live without, having felt it for awhile. And now it's here again and it doesn't feel awkward or strange because it's always been in her, a part of her, just

waiting for him.


He tells her he loves her. And though somewhere inside it makes her soar, Sinclair's reaction is actually rather quiet. She half-closes her eyes, turning her face towards his. Kisses his face, breathes him in.


Relaxed, limbs molten, they rest. Then they move apart, Alex laying beside her and Sinclair turning onto her side, keeping one leg wrapped over his hip. She keeps him inside of her. She lays on the pillow she's sharing with him, and she opens her eyes. Her hand rests on his waist. His hand comes to her breast, and he can feel the slow, light clench of her around him. She's always been like this: responsive, eager, dry tinder to a spark.

Sinclair doesn't push him onto his back and mount him, though. She just lays there with him, enjoying his hand on her, enjoying her body's response to him, enjoying the ache between her legs and in her hips.

My body remembers you, she thinks. And nuzzles him as he speaks to her, not so much sleepy as...just happy, happy to the point of pure contentedness. Sinclair is bowing her head to kiss his chest, to brush her lips across his nipple, when he says But if you ever go back and there's the faintest, vaguest ripple of tension through her. She lifts her head to look up at him as he goes on, and her eyes blink a couple of times.

She's quiet a moment. Then: "I didn't," she confesses, then lowers her head again and closes her eyes, laying against him and holding him the way she's missed doing for all this time. "I do now though."

I believe you.

[Alex] There was a time when that flicker of tension would have sent an answering tension through Alexander. Bracing for the blow, one might say -- though he himself would never admit it. Would never admit that fear, even if he never tried to hide that sometimes she does frighten him, because it's different to say sometimes when you're pissed off you freak me out and sometimes even when we're in bed together and calm and quiet and I know you won't hurt me, you freak me out.

He never admitted it, and so of course they could never talk about it, and so of course he could never tell her when that stopped being the case, and so of course she kept thinking he was afraid of her, he was with her out of fear or obligation or --

It's in the past, now. Alexander understands it, and Sinclair understands it, and it drove them apart once and it'll take more than one good conversation to be really Over It forever, but

it's a start. It's a very good start.

And there's no tension in him to answer hers. And she can believe that now, the same way she can believe that if she were to pick up and leave again tomorrow, to go back to Chicago or to New York City or to Kansas or to Easter fucking Island, he'd go with her. Maybe not quite uncomplainingly -- maybe not even immediately, dropping everything he has to follow her -- but he would. He'd go with her, to be with her.

"You do now," he echoes quietly. They're facing each other, more or less. They're lying on their sides now, tangled together, close and warm and neither of them seem inclined to move.

Out in the living room, canned explosions and piped-in screams, teenagers laughing. In here, muffled through the thin walls: a sort of peace. Quiet.

"I'm gonna go get you a nightstand tomorrow," Alex adds, sounding blurrier now, lazy and sleepy and content. "And if you wanna put your stuff in the closet and stuff just squish mine aside. And I should probably go get some more hangars too cuz mine are overpacked as they are, and you actually look like some of your clothes need to be hanged up now..."

he trails off. He nuzzles closer. He could probably sleep like this, drop off mid-sentence, happy. He wouldn't mind at all.

[Sinclair] And there was a time when that flicker of tension itself would have been so great, not just a hint of emotional resistance and confusion but a physical rejection of what she feared, a rigidity and not just a flexion. This time it just moves through her, and for the span of a few words, and then it flows away again. Her fear is less. So, too, is his. So they're okay.


She keeps touching him, not light and feathery brushes of her hands but occasional movements of her palm. Sinclair touches his side, right above his ribs, and feels his heart thudding slower by the moment. Sinclair moves it up over his pectoral and smiles at the way it's shaped beneath her hand, how warm he is, how after all this time in California and all her time in Chicago he's tanned and she's freckled-fair, and soon enough she'll be a warm gold that is still not quite the same color he has. Sinclair sweeps her caress over his shoulder and his bicep, and she's never given a damn about the other women inked into his flesh, just as she never regretted the tattoo on her ankle even though for awhile looking at it made her howl inside for him, long for his body to be there, talking to her body, when the words they'd say aloud sometimes went so awry.

They never went to Easter Island for the eclipse. It's sad, but that's okay, too. He never went to Kansas with her to meet her parents, who are these ridiculously nice and supportive people who had no other children to give all their time and love to so she was raised with an abundance of it. They are also intuitive, intelligent, empathetic people, who would see in a heartbeat on meeting Alex why she's drawn to him, and what she needs from him, even if Sinclair herself just knows:

want him. love him.

Who would know, shaking his hand and having a beer on the back porch with him, how much he could teach her if he's willing. And would see, through whatever persona he decided to wear while meeting his girlfriend's folks, that he sees some part of the girl they raised, and not the monster the tribe trained: a girl who, at her very core, is more gentle and more eager to give of herself than any werewolf who's ever known her could possibly know -- or appreciate.

So maybe they'll go to Easter Island for a vacation. Or Kansas for Sinclair's birthday. There are a lot of maybes. It's unlikely that she's going to get up and go anywhere for a long while, though -- Will is healed but he needs a permit and he needs a firearm. Sinclair already knows she wants to talk to Alex about if he really wants to start organizing a team of some of the better students he has among the Kinfolk here, and how he feels about Kin Fetches for them. Somewhere down the line she's going to have bursts of sadness, rather intense sadness, where she just... misses her pack.

I'll come with you, he's said. And perhaps he'll say it again, and she'll say

I'm not ready. That might be a conversation. That might just be accepted as-is. That might one day become:

Okay.


She breathes in deeply and her hand slides around his waist to his back. Sinclair pulls herself closer, and her leg lowers a bit, too. She relaxes. No matter if he slips out of her sooner or later, no clinging for him to stay close, no, no, don't go, don't be gone. No worry. No fear. She nuzzles her head under his chin and tucks her body against his chest, holds his body to hers. They almost always slept entangled like this, facing one another, a lazy, warm knot of limbs in the center of a bed that's just barely big enough for the two of them anyway.

The noise in the living room won't keep her awake. At ten o'clock it'll shut down anyway because those teenagers remember what happened last night at 10:02 p.m. and they fully believed his threat to be kicked out on their asses if they didn't SHUT UP. But they could cause a ruckus until past midnight and it wouldn't keep Sinclair awake. Alex could extricate himself from her arms and go banging about the room come morning and it wouldn't wake Sinclair up.

Right now, though, her eyes are half-open and she's smiling drowsily, hearing his voice in the depths of his chest as well as in the air. "We can go to Ikea," she says happily.

They don't drop off immediately. They do get quiet, his lips pressing against her forehead once more. Sooner or later he grabs the end of the rumpled, shoved-aside comforter and drags it up over them. As soon as he's settled, the warm lump of Glass Walker beside him has her arms wrapping around him again, his arms wrapping around her again, eyes closing in the dark. It'll be awhile before ten p.m., but no matter. Sinclair falls asleep well before then, in the way that warm, satiated animals sleep even when they don't need the rest.

The last thing she remembers is the smell of Alex on the blanket that comes to cover her. And such a profound ache washes through her that she knows it for relief. Okay, she thinks, finally after all this time, because that is how she feels. And with that, she sleeps.


A few days later, a parcel arrives in Chicago at the Loft, addressed to The Unbroken, c/o Katherine Bellamonte. It's just a USB drive, a slim red thing that probably cost a pittance at MicroCenter. On it is a small video file, obviously made on Sinclair's webcam. She's sitting in a sunny room, cross-legged on a rumpled bed, and there's external noise. Someone banging on a drumkit in the other room.

"Hey guys," Sinclair says, smiling. Her eyes are a little keen, a little achey -- but that smile is real, and warm, and even happy. Happier than any of them have seen her in a goddamn long time. Which may, in fact, be why she took a video instead of contacting them across their bond. "I just wanted to touch base and let you know what's up. I miss you." A pause; there's not much she can add to that, not much she can say that will touch the true depth of it. "I still have to stay here for awhile. I'm going to try and work with the sept here so they get their act together a little more. The way they deal with kin...the way they've always dealt with kin... is fucked right the hell up. And my cousin still needs a lot of help."

A beat is missed. Fuck! someone yells; goes right back to drumming. Sinclair doesn't look away from the webcam, but there's a hint of a grin somewhere in her face, the sort of smile it takes effort to restrain, and not to produce.

"And... um. Yeah." She exhales. "I need to be here for awhile." She may as well be telling them: I need to heal. I need to find my footing. I need to just be. "But I hope I can come back. When I can," she says, just as serious. "I just wanted you guys to know that... ah."

She shrugs. Smiles. It's small, but it's real, and maybe even a little surprised to find that it's the truth, when twenty-four hours ago it wasn't:

"I'm okay."

beach days.

[Sinclair] It's a long drive to California from Chicago. She could have flown, and she could have just picked up the phone and zapped herself to Will's hospital room if she'd wanted to, but the latter is dangerous at best and the former meant leaving her car behind in Chicago. She rebuilt that El Camino with her father before she took it to San Diego the first time.

Nobody ever asks her how she got into the University of California. It's not an easy school to get into. Most of the UCs aren't. And yes, she's bright and she's driven and she did so many extracurriculars that her application looked sparkly and shiny. But the truth is, her family knows people. Not her parents, specifically, but her father's extended family. She went to UCSD to get far, far away from Kansas. She went to UCSD because people who knew her also knew people who mattered.

This is also part of how Will got in, but less so: Will is smarter than she was at 18. He has no Rage distracting him. Animals don't shy away or flip the fuck out when he walks by. Will isn't having nightmares all night, every night, leaving him exhausted and harried every morning when he goes to class. Will didn't just get into UCSD by being sharp as a tack and a bit of a gunner, he's making good grades there because he has a competitive streak in him that made him come very close to swearing at his terrifying older cousin Heather when she beat him at Wii Tennis.

She wonders as she drives how much that competitive streak -- that almost feral streak in him -- had to do with why he's lying in a hospital bed after nearly having his left kidney chopped out by a gorehound.


The conversations she had with Lukas, with Katherine, the last time she felt Asha before the Ahroun was gone -- she tries not to think about it. Every mile marker she passes feels like a reminder of that hole in her that even her pack can't fill -- and of the literal distance she's now putting between herself and them. Her hands grip the wheel and she feels Perun sleeping in the blue sky, waiting for his turn to unleash destruction. She misses them, and it takes effort to shake it off, to drive forward anyway. It's like she told them. And she tries not to think of what she told them, either. She just drives.


Her family in Kansas is okay. They've been okay for years. Her cousin just got attacked in the same city where she Changed, and after she stops by his room to see how he's doing and to talk to his parents she has a bone to pick with the Walkers in the same goddamn high-rise sept she was Fostered at. Held in for weeks because she was dangerous. The Walkers in Kansas seem to have a better handle on keeping the local Kin safe, and her parents aren't stupid. Nor are they college students walking around after dark in San Diego.

It's a long drive. She drinks a lot of Monster. She stops at a little motel in Grand Junction and sleeps for about six hours before she keeps driving. Goes straight to the hospital and brushes her teeth and scrubs her face with cold water in the bathroom before she goes to see Will. Visiting hours are almost over. The hospital staff ducks out of her way, except for a couple of nurses who look like they've been doing this job so long they do not give a fuck if she does look crazy they are not taking her shit, oh hell no.

She doesn't give them any shit anyway. She goes quietly into his room and he acts like he's fine and she jokes around with him. She asks a few questions about the Walkers he knows. His parents want him to come back to Kansas; he resists and Sinclair tells them:

You don't have to worry about him staying here. I'm going to take care of it.


Half an hour later she's said goodbye and hugged her family and driven over to the sept and there is a broken waiting room chair on the floor behind the receptionist at the front desk. The receptionist is slowly coming back up from a sudden duck, unable to keep from staring.

"No," Sinclair seethes, hands on the top of the desk, nails that threaten to turn into claws scraping across the granite with a shrill, grating noise, "I will not wait just a moment to see the Executive Kinfolk Liaison, you rank little excuse for a puddle of piss."


While she's in the EKL's office she's much calmer. Much more respectful of the other Fostern -- it's not exactly a glamorous job he has, tell the truth -- than she was of the pre-Changed will-be Cub (ie, 'Intern') who has the misfortune of manning reception this week. The so-called 'interns' try to tell themselves this is a lucky shot, this is their chance to help guard the caern even before they Change, this is a way to get to know the sept members who might become their mentors, but a few of them say that having to get someone's coffee one more time is going to be what triggers their Change, they swear.

The EKL tries to feed her bullshit. That makes her eyes spark. She knows what the sept is capable of. She's a product of it. They knew exactly where she was, they knew exactly when she Changed. She knows how many pots they have their fingers in and she knows they can do a better job than letting their best and brightest Kin who are essentially of breedable age get clawed apart by gorehounds without receiving backup until they're nearly dead on the ground.

And he tries to blame Will. "Excuse me?" Sinclair snaps back. "I just spoke to Will -- he got your flowers, by the way, thanks so much -- and he said he had neither a Kin Fetch nor a Trapdoor nor any talen that could have kept him from getting a chunk taken out of his side. He had no training on how to protect himself, no warning of hot zones, nothing. He had a phone number. Why do you people think I sent him to you in January, to say hi and have a muffin? Jesus!"


It's not a lengthy discussion, but it's productive. She gets the name of the Garou who did answer that phone call and who showed up before Will bled to death but not before someone had called 9-1-1 and gotten an ambulance called. She doesn't go see him immediately, though. She drops by Colfax's place and smokes a joint with the Philodox. He looks over her new work. She tells him about Arthur. She explains the script on her forearms. They talk a lot longer than she expected to, and drink some. She tells him the story behind the viper and she laughs when he notices the feather dangling from the red bead on one earring.

"My pack," she says, reaching up to touch the tiny metal feather. And maybe it's the alcohol or the weed or the fact that her pack is so far away and she's not going back anytime soon because she needs to take care of her family and she needs to not be such a goddamn burden, but her pale eyes turn to water

and the water flows down, into cupped hands that rise to cover her face.

Colfax, called Watchword, never gets around to asking Sinclair about the cuff-style tattoo on her ankle or what the Portugese says. It's probably for the best. He doesn't hug her, or pat her back. He smokes on the couch next to her, looking at the ceiling. Eventually he starts to talk about what Sinclair could do from here, places she could stay, people who might be able to help her train Will, stuff like that. The tears ease up in time and she mutely takes in some of the information.

Watchword makes her miss Lukas and Kate and Sarita. Jesus. She's remembering why she never ended up in a pack with him. She thinks of Asha, and her chest caves in.


"Shit," Sinclair says, waking up well into the next afternoon. "Why didn't my phone go of-- fuck!" She shakes the thing with its dead battery and would hurl it across the room if she didn't have significantly more control than she did a year ago. Sighing, she grabs her jeans off the floor and yanks them on, getting up off of Colfax's couch. He's not even there; he's asleep in his own bedroom.

She helps herself to something to eat and a quick shower and heads out in clean clothes to go see that goddamn Ragabash to tell him thanks for saving her cousin's life. That's a slightly more enjoyable conversation, though she tells the Cliath that just because he's not a Theurge doesn't mean he can't learn to make talens, and if the EKL keeps giving his phone number out to Kin who might call for help it'll save him a lot of time and trouble if he equips them. Trains them. Helps them.

When he asks her what she's going to do about it if she cares so much, she nearly breaks his neck. She thinks about it, but then gets worn out by the thought. "I'm going to teach Will how not to get killed, and until I believe he'll be safe with just you clowns watching his back, I'm going to stay close enough that I can help him when he needs it."

"...Oh."

"Yeah. 'Oh'."


Back in the El Camino. She never gets sick of driving this car, but right about now she could use a twelve-hour period when she's not driving it. She wants to get out and run. She wants to go to the shore and rent a board and see how much she's forgotten about surfing. She wants to lay out and soak up the warmth and be at the edge of the world. She remembers, with the faintest smile as she drives back to Watchword's place,

how that always used to help.


"Your phone made noise," Colfax's packmate tells her. She's new, a techno-Theurge who plays video games by talking to the spirits in the controllers and is texting at the same time. Sinclair does not like her. She wonders, too, what Colfax's neighbors think of a 16 year old girl hanging out at his place all the time.

Sinclair rolls her eyes and goes through her messages. She answers them in order. She tells her parents she got here okay and Will is gonna be okay and she'll take care of him. She calls her uncle and tells him that as soon as he can get Will discharged she'll patch him up, she can probably make sure he won't even scar, just call her. There are no message from members of the Unbroken, and truth be told, she's relieved. She can't. Not right now. She'll write to them later, or Skype, or something.

There's a voicemail from a number she never took out of her address book, just in case. Just in case of what, she never tried to answer honestly. In case he needed help. In case something happened. In case she -- god, she doesn't even know. If she's not desperate, if she hasn't been desperate for months now, she doesn't know what to call it. She doesn't know what to call I'm trying not to slip into harano, if not 'desperate'. Not that it made her call him.

Putting the phone to her ear, she listens to the message. It's brief. It doesn't sound like it came easily, whatever his tone is. However much he blusters or doesn't, there's no way it could have been easy, even if it's just

that he heard she was in town. And he's wondering if they could talk about stuff.

Sinclair ends the voicemail, doesn't delete it. She stares at the phone. Taleisha wins the game over in the living room. Sinclair wonders who Alex knows at the San Diego sept that he heard she was in town after just a couple of days. Maybe that little intern made a GW.Net blogpost whining about the mean chick who threw the chair, not naming names, and all it took was a trolling avaughn and a little searching to figure out who that meanie was. It doesn't really matter. She closes her eyes and takes a breath, then opens them and starts a text message to Alex, writing simply:

How about a drink?

When she has it, she lets him know -- texting, again, because she can not talk to him yet -- that she can't come tomorrow, family stuff. The day after okay? You know LaHaina? Okay. I'll see you then.


One more night at Colfax's place. A day spent with her aunt and uncle and Will. She heals him with gourds, and they have a Family Meeting at her aunt and uncle's hotel room about how things are going to be. What's going to happen. No, they are not moving to San Diego, and he's not moving back to Wichita. No, they are not going to get her an apartment, she'll figure it out. Will doesn't like guns. Sinclair wants to know how he likes his kidneys being inside his body, and her tone must have been rather harsh, because they all go still and quiet.

She sighs. She gentles. They only found out they were kin a couple of months ago. They're doing the best they can. She wonders if they know, if they can tell, that so is she.

And another night spent on Colfax's couch, because she doesn't want her aunt and uncle getting her a room at their hotel. They're going to stay for awhile, until Will 'is recovered' and can go back to school. Technically he's healed, but nobody else needs to know how quickly he got better. Sinclair meets and re-meets the rest of Colfax's pack, who are so different from the Unbroken that her skin crawls. Colfax offers her more weed after everyone else has left or crashed, offers her more liquor, and she shakes it off.

The next morning -- well, afternoon -- she wakes up on the couch, and she takes her time moving. She takes her time in the shower this time. She thinks about what she's going to wear. She lets her hair dry naturally, which means instead of being perfect-pin-straight it has a few subtle waves in its lengths. She puts on a pair of jeans from the box of clothes in the back of the El Cam, some so-dark-they're-almost-black and so-tight-they're-almost-leggings pants that Katherine bought her for Christmas. She doesn't want to know how much they cost but she doesn't want to wear a skirt and it seem like ...something.

"What're you getting all gussied up for?" Colfax wants to know, halfway through a frozen breakfastwich he just heated up.

"Your mother," Sinclair says flatly, and pulls on a loose, soft tank top in rich cerulean that drapes over her. It, too, was from Katherine. That woman got such a kick out of buying clothes for her packmates. Sinclair's wardrobe is much different now than it was when she moved to Chicago. The top has an abstract pattern or patch of sequins across the front, giving it a little interest but bewildering the girl whose nicest shirt used to be the one t-shirt that actually fit. She adds no jewelry; what she already wears in her body and under her skin is adornment enough.

She wonders about wearing heels. She puts on a pair of plain flats instead and flips off Colfax when he raises his eyebrows at her. "Tell my mom I said hi," he says archly as she leaves.

And drives down to the beach. She left Chicago on a Monday morning. It's now late Friday afternoon. The Lahaina Beach Club hasn't even hit its stride yet for the evening. The sun hasn't even started sinking yet. People are out there, though. It's late enough that schools are out and most classes are done for the day, early enough that most people aren't even thinking about dinner plans yet. Sinclair parks, and is doubly glad she wore flats, taking them off as she hits the sand to walk towards the deck of the bar.

[Alex] San Diego and Chicago in late winter: it's hard to think of a bigger contrast. Up north the world is white. Snow on the ground. Snow in the sky. Storms and wind and darkness, while down here, down south, it's --

well, in truth, it's been pretty rainy lately. Enough that the rugged desert mountains are blooming over in east county. Enough that the streets run rampant with rainwater, that Tijuana river's probably flooding and drowning indigent illegals, that San Diegans are panicking on the freeways and emergency-blinkering in distress.

It was a nice day today, though, clouds streaking across the western sky. The ocean is a vast, restless entity under the variegated sky, a god of motion and power not so very unlike the one Sinclair follows.

Saltwater froths against the beach. LaHaina's on Pacific Beach, right on the lip of Mission Bay, which is an odd little place -- home of Sea World and yacht clubs and all manner of tourist traps, but also peppered with some alarmingly seedy areas. La Haina's not one of them. It's all grass umbrellas and beach huts here, margaritas and daiquiris and burritos and fajitas. Sinclair doesn't really stand out. Lots of blondes in San Diego, and this weather is considered cold by SoCal standards. Only tourists wear short shorts and skimpy tops, and La Haina's got more locals than tourists on a Friday night.

The sun's not quite down yet. Past the parking lot, past the sidewalk, past the dry sand and the wet, sunlight casts a searing line down the rippled ocean. There's an outdoors deck round back -- because of course there is -- and it's crowded with customers, but even so Sinclair can see Alexander there from a long ways away.

It's not pure breeding. None of Cockroach's kin have any to speak of. It's just the energy, the strength and vitality and attitude jam-packed into him, like he's a little ball of condensed matter just shy of critical mass. He's not actually on the deck but just off it, a surfboard jabbed into the soft sand beside him, a bottle of Corona in his hand. There's sand stuck to his shins and his feet, and his hair is still a little damp. He looks tanned and healthy and fit; he looks like San Diego agrees with him far better than Chicago ever did. He's wearing sunglasses, which he pushes up on his head as he, sensing her approach, turns.

"Hey," he says. He doesn't jump to his feet, but he does extend his beer to her. She can see him looking at her, looking her over. "Nice shirt."

[Sinclair] She stands out no more than she would anyway. The shirt bares her arms, and that slender piercing through the skin of one bicep is enough to make even those who fear her look twice, because what. the fuck. She doesn't stand out because of the ink, though, or her cothes, but because she's something more than most people here ever deal with. Ever see. Weird they can handle. Rain makes them panic. But they react like every other human being on the planet to a hungry wolf walking slowly into their midst.

He looks like he spent the afternoon -- probably most of the morning, too -- surfing. He always was the one with the rigid schedule, though she doesn't know if he keeps that up still. She's the one who falls asleep and might not get up again for twelve hours. Sleeping on the road was hard because she had to set four alarms and have the front desk call her to wake her up, and she was pissy the rest of the day.

Sinclair can, in fact, feel him looking her over. Her face is blank, though, as though she's making it so. She says Hey back when he does, as throwaway a greeting as there might be in existence. He compliments her shirt and she doesn't say anything. She doesn't take his beer.

She wets her lips, nodding towards the stairs up the deck to the club. She hasn't blinked. "You wanna go in?"

[Alex] His eyes look good in this light, in this city. The slant of the western sun hits them just right, picks out the gold amongst the hazel. They flick toward the beachhouse, then back.

"Nah." It might've been a long time since anyone -- any kin, anyway -- has said that to Sinclair. So offhandedly, as though unafraid of retribution. Surely he's tense, meeting his ex after months, nearly a year. Surely he's tense, asking her to meet days after he found out she's in town, that she's shown up in the town that he's somehow somewhen migrated to.

Surely he's tense. She's a monster.

But he doesn't show it, and maybe that's just bluster. But he tells her no, and then he nods toward the club house again. "If you wanna get a drink I'll wait for you. But I thought maybe we could walk down the beach a little. Get a little privacy while we talk."

There's that word again, talk. It was on his voicemail too, the short little message that constituted the first time they've spoken -- after a fashion -- since the night he came home and she was already asleep and he was bumping around in the dark when suddenly she was awake and there and he flinched out of sheer instinct and she took herself away, pulled far far far away as though convinced he was afraid of her, didn't want her, never did --

that night he snapped the lights on and said You know what, I just can't deal with your damage anymore, and it was a cold vicious thing to say, but then it was a cold vicious cycle they were in, and...

however it was they ended, anyway. That message, the first for nearly a year, simply said:

Heard you were in town. Can we talk?

[Sinclair] My damage? had been that rapid but groggy, half-asleep answer, and the fight that followed was one to write home about. Because of the things they said. Because of the weaknesses they accused each other of, because it was his problem, he didn't trust her, why wouldn't he just believe she wasn't going to hurt him, for fuck's sake, she'd never hurt him

and he felt so coddled, so condescended to, and he reacted the only way Alexander Vaughn could. Or would.

It wasn't just that one argument. It was the way she slammed a drawer and how she felt when he'd flinch. It was the way they'd start yelling once their heart rates picked up. It was they way they couldn't ever just hash something out because of her temper, because of his, because every argument seemed loom as life-threatening and every attempt at communicating calmly felt like a path across eggshells. She remembers him throwing that word at her over and over, particularly in that last argument.

Which happened at his place, which for a really brief period in time had been her place, but really their place and by god it had felt good calling it that even for a few weeks. She was so giddy when she moved everything in, throwing her arms around him and jumping up on him, legs around his waist, kissing the grin on his face with the grin on hers. She also vaguely remembers one of the first arguments they had after she moved in was about whether or not to put her on the lease and have her pay part of rent, and she wanted to but he was as resistant about that as he was every time they really talked about Their Relationship, even though --

it came up more than once, this, in louder and louder voices

-- he was the one who invited her to live with him, and he was the one who asked her why they weren't mated, and yet he's the one who always got weird if she brought up anything resembling talk about committment. Like it was okay if it was always him bringing it up.

That's not fair, he'd snapped, and it's not true, either.

Oh. The ways that they could fight.


The last time they were in the same ten feet of space, he said he was sick of this. And a couple of hours later she was leaving. A day later there was the stiff telephone conversation of restrained anger and lingering frustration when they decided, oh yes, maybe this was just for the best. Then he was coming home from the gym or wherever and all of her stuff was gone. Her key was left with the landlord. She'd even taken the tin and aluminum cans out of the laundry basket and dropped them in a recycling bin by the dumpster.

A week later he'd found a pink hair tie of hers on the floor near the couch

and a couple of days later, the half-eaten pint of her favorite ice cream in the very back of the freezer. But nothing else. Nothing left of her.


Nah, he says, so offhand, nodding at the club. She's tense, on the verge of anger or something, but she just shrugs. "All right," she says,a nd heads over to the stairs. At the base she brushes off her feet, puts her shoes back on, and walks in.

"I need a shot of 1800 and a Corona with a slice of lime," she tells the bartender. He doesn't even card her, not this girl, not on a Friday night, not when he'd really like to keep his testicles. She takes the shot as soon as it's poured, squeezes the lime juice into the neck of the beer and then jams it in to plop into the liquid.

About five or six minutes later she comes back out, carrying the beer with the wedge of lime floating therein. She stares at him, not quite blank but restrained. Held back. Guarded. "So where do you want to walk?"

[Alex] He's standing when she comes back out. His feet are bare and they're still kind of sandy, even though the rest of his skin is dry now, even though his hair is drying now. Another year, another year older. About this time last year was the first time they fucked; the first time anyone fucked Heather Sinclair, period. She seems very different now. Older and harder, maybe, or maybe that's just how awkward everything seems, right now.

Scarred, in the space between.

Maybe he's a little different too. He still looks the same, the asshole with the tan and the attitude. He stands the same way, kind of stocky and jut-jawed like he's always on the verge of challenging someone, something. He scrubs his knuckles through his hair to get sand and dampness and salt out as she comes over, but

the first thing he says, meeting her eyes again, is, "I didn't mean to be a dick or something. I just didn't wanna go inside and yell over all the Friday night frat kids."

She got a Corona too. Something about a little sea shack in pacific beach just makes Corona make sense. She asks him where he wants to walk and he shifts his beer to his left hand, plucks his board out of the sand with his right and tucks it under his arm. He picks a direction -- right -- and starts walking, the sun at his left. It takes effort, slip-sliding, to go over the soft dry sand, but then they're on the hardpacked wet sand right at the waterline. He waits for her to take her shoes off, if she wants to, then starts walking.

"I moved out of our place," and maybe he doesn't even mean to call it that, because he winces when he does, "about a week or two after you did. Left town and went to New York, but it didn't agree with me. I'm not a New Yorker, not even close. It's not that I wasn't born there or whatever. Some people, they move there and they're New Yorkers in a week. Me, I stayed there three months and everyone could smell the otherness on me, I swear.

"Anyway," he doesn't know why he's telling her this, except maybe that it's a place to start, it's a way to fill in the gaps, "around the end of summer I went to Boston. Liked it better there, but then the weather started going cold and I decided fuck it. Came out here around Thanksgiving. Been here ever since."

A bit of hesitation, more in his manner than in his voice.

"I've ... been kinda more involved out here. I mean. It's not like I'm some eagle scout of gaia now. But I got a two-bedroom place and one of the bedrooms is just two bunk beds jammed in for anyone that needs 'em. I'm teaching some guys to fight. Defend themselves long enough to run away. I'm thinking of putting together ... sort of like a team. Maybe take some of my better pupils. Getaway drivers and light backup work for the local wolves. I guess I figure...

"Well. I don't know. I just felt like it, I guess.

"Anyway, I heard about your cousin through the grapevine. I figured you might show up." He looks at her; the sun's at his back, and it's hard to read his face in the shadow. "You sticking around a while?"

[Sinclair] It wasn't like she marked on the calendar when she lost her virginity, drawing stars or a smiley face or something. But she remembers running -- physically running -- from Chicago to Rio de Janeiro to see him when he left Chicago. She remembers confessing to him, not just implying or asking or dancing around it but flat-out telling him that she couldn't get near him without wanting to fuck him. And not some rosy, romantic lovemaking. She described it in terms of sweat. Of breath. Of her tongue on him, his hands on her. It was like the name she earned a couple of months later: raw, brutal truth.

But a year later she remembered it anyway. She didn't go back and read her journals from that time, went out and tried to do something else with her time, but she remembered anyway. And she remembers, seeing him now after all the months since July began and they ended, the way she used to feel every time she got around him.

"You weren't being a dick," she says, as soon as he gets that out. She almost sighs it, shaking her head. "I'm just --"

damaged, maybe.

But there's nothing else there, vocally. Just a shrug. And so she asks, instead, where he wants to go. And they walk, instead. Alex puts himself between Sinclair and the water. She walks with her shoes off and dangling from one hand, beer bottle held in the other. Her bare feet leave quickly washed-away prints on the hard wet sand. The ankles of her jeans get wet. She doesn't care. She wouldn't.

Alex talks, and that seems right: he's the one that called her. If Sinclair had found him and come to him to talk, this conversation might have started differently. Be different now. Very much so, in fact. But that's not how it happened, and now she's quiet, just listening to him as he tells her about New York and Boston and then what he's been doing in San Diego.

She turns and looks at him when he says he has bunk beds for anyone who needs it and he's teaching other people how to not get killed. If it's surprise that makes her look over at him -- and it might be -- she doesn't vocalize it. She just listens, sipping her beer. The tequila has her calmer than she was when she went in the bar. Thank god.

"Yeah," she says, at his question, looking back ahead of herself and taking a longer, deeper drink. "I, uh..."

She shrugs. "I left Chicago," she says, "to come out here and stay. Take care of Will, at least til I know he can take care of himself." Her thumb rubs against the label on her bottle. "But to be honest, I just need a break. Not from the war. And definitely not from my pack, they..."

Again, there's nothing she can say there. Nothing that wouldn't send her careening over some edge. She wants to look at the water but that's looking towards Alex, so she looks back over the beach, looks at the still-blue sky for a moment before taking a breath and turning her eyes forward again. "I just needed to be somewhere else."

It's a moment, only, before she looks at him again. Then stops. Waits for him to stop, too, and angles herself so she's not looking at the sun. "Alex, why'd you ask to talk to me?"

[Alex] Isn't that the question.

They've walked quite a distance already. Easy to do that when you're just following the shifting shoreline, talking thoughtfully, slowly. Moving along the wet sand, watching the waves come up and lap over your feet, feeling the sand melt away under your toes as the ocean recedes, sucking you toward it as though to remind you that once upon a time, once upon a time, you were born in the salt sea. The beach house is far behind them, but they can still hear music, voices.

Alexander stops, setting his board end-down on the beach. Unsurprisingly, it's a short board, designed for carving, for tricks. He's not the longboarding kind, though Sinclair might be. It's too cold to surf suitless these days, but his wetsuit just a shorty, stopping at the knees, and the top half is peeled down to let his skin dry better. When the wind blows, his skin prickles from cold.

He'd watched her earlier as she told him about leaving her pack to wait for her back in Chicago. About needing to do that, not just for her cousin's sake but for her own. Needing time away, apart, alone, out. His eyes are the same now, attentive, alert, intelligent -- fast on her face and unflinching.

"I wanted to talk," he says. "I ... thought I owed you an apology. After the way we ended. I said a lot of shit that I don't think I really even meant. A lot of shit. And I'm sorry."

He takes a swig of Corona then; turns to squint at the setting sun. A blaze of light down that ocean now. Shorebirds with long curving beaks, hunch-shouldered, skitter ahead of the rising tide. Alex thinks a moment, then scuffs sand thoughtlessly off his cheekbone with the back of his hand, turns back.

"I also...

"We had a pretty good thing, didn't we?" That first thread ends, broken; this one begins. He's quieter now. "We really... we were into each other. I really liked you. But there was something there we just couldn't get over, some invisible brick wall we kept running into. I guess I just wanted to talk. Figure out what went wrong.

"Maybe figure out -- especially since you're going to be here now -- if we've got room for another chance."

[Sinclair] That she needed to get in her car and drive across the country to get the hell away is not something Sinclair has told anyone else. It's not something she could say to Kate, Lukas, or Sarita, newcomer that she is. Maybe they'd even understand, but it would still hurt. It would still sting them, however well they took it. Lukas couldn't bear seeing her like this, knew only that she was suffering and that as much help as she needed, as much as she might even want help, there just... wasn't help to be given. Katherine had her own troubles. Laying down the mantle of Mistress of Challenges, kinfolk always causing trouble, her heart set aside again and again for the sake of duty.

How would it feel, having her say I'm sorry, but I can't do this anymore. I need to be alone. I need to run away and go somewhere completely different, completely separate. I need to go somewhere that I can find a hole and curl up inside until the hurt stops. Or at least until I learn to live with it. I need to get away from your sympathy and I need to get away from you knowing how broken I am and I need to just... not... be here.

So she didn't say it to them. She went for the sake of her cousin, even though they hugged her and they knew that in a way she was trying to escape the yawning, ravenous pit of despair that Garou seem prone to in a way even mortals aren't. Then again, mortals don't see the things they see. They don't endure all of that and they don't have maybe one or two shining, good thing in their lives that remind them there's something worth fighting for.

Now they're looking at each other and she's as stark and frank as she can be, looking away for a moment when he does, drinking her beer while he's squinting at the sun that's only just now started to descend, though it still doesn't touch the water, hasn't turned the ocean into livid molten gold. Not yet. She's still looking away, towards the earth as though she can't bear to share looking at the water and sunlight with him just yet. So she looks at the sand, and the earth, and the way that at least half the sky is still brightened by the escaping sun. She looks at the tops of distant trees, the tops of distant houses.

As he says that he's sorry. She looks back to him a little bit later, when he is looking back at her. Licks her lips, pressing them together, as he says that they had a pretty good thing. As she tries, however hard she can, not to react, not to assume, not to jump ahead too far. I really liked you, he says. He talks about a brick wall and she's just -- as her packmates have noticed more and more and more over the last several months -- too tired to know what to do with that. Too tired to even get defensive, to assume he means her.

And then he gets to the end, mentions that -- well, especially since she's going to be in San Diego and all -- maybe they. Y'know. If there's room. A chance.

Sinclair takes a breath, her shoulders and chest lifting with it, and exhales with measured care. "You want to know the truth?"

Here it comes. I don't forgive you. Yeah, you did say a lot of shit you should be sorry for.

"For the last ...however long now... I've been trying really hard to make myself believe that us breaking up was for the best. Like maybe I was just hung up on you because you were my first, and I was just infatuated and stupid and ---" she cuts off, looking at the water and sighing, shaking her head. "I worked my ass off trying to believe it wasn't right for either of us, because if it was, it wouldn't have ended like that."

Sinclair takes a small, quick drink of beer as she looks back at him. "I don't really believe any of that, though. I think we did have something good." There's a slight pause. "It was really good for me, at least." Good, she says. Not just happy or great but as though there was something to it that...made her better. Stronger.

Quietly, then: "For what it's worth, I forgave you a really long time ago for all the things you said. I just... I feel like maybe we both really know what went wrong. And I don't want to put you through that again."

[Alex] "I don't think we do," Alex replies, about as quiet and gentle a disagreement as she -- or anyone -- has ever heard from him. He's not a creature of quiet disagreements. If he was, they might not have ended quite the way they did, slamming doors, hands thrown into the air, shouting matches. They might have still ended, but it would have been a quieter, bloodier, subtler experience. The jury's out on which is more toxic.

"I think we both thought we knew. But if we really knew we would've fixed it. Don't you think? I mean... neither of us are idiots, and both of us knew we had something good. We're smart enough to try to hold on to something good if we can. To fix whatever was wrong, if we could.

"We couldn't. So maybe we didn't really know what was wrong."

The waves come in. They wash over his bare feet, erode the ground away as they pull back, sheets and rivulets of saltwater rushing away to rejoin the whole. Alex watches it for a moment, letting the ground melt, letting himself sink in the wet, watery sand.

"For what it's worth," he says then, "I'm not here to assign blame. I just want to see what went wrong, and if what went wrong was fixable. Because if it was, then we can fix it. And then no one's going to put anyone through anything again."

[Sinclair] He's using logic. Sinclair watches him almost warily, as though he's either not quite making sense or he's getting at something and she's waiting for it to hit. One plus one equals two: they aren't idiots and they both think they had something good. Two plus two equals four: we're smart enough to know what's worth it and what's not and so maybe we're smart enough to fix it. Seven minus five is two: we didn't fix it, so we didn't know what the problem was.

Alexander can see her processing even as he's talking. She's never been good at concealing what she's thinking, seldom good at concealing how she's feeling. Sinclair drinks some more of her Corona and takes a breath, then nods. "Okay." She nods a little ways up the beach, to dry sand. "Let's go sit down."

Unless he dissents, she heads a couple of yards up and lowers herself to the sand, shoes set aside and beer in hand. Her feet wiggle into the sand that is not quite sun-warmed. Her knees are bent, her legs straight as her back, her Corona resting idly against her shins where her hands drape over her knees.

When he's beside her, she looks at the sun, the water, the birds and surfers. Then him. "So... where do we start?"

[Alex] Alex doesn't dissent. He follows her up, his bare feet leaving tracks in the wet sand -- then simply shifting indents in the dry. The surface layer is warmer, though not quite warm, from the day. Just beneath is an infinite, wintry coolness. Still, when they sit, Alex digs his feet into the sand, leans forward to whimsically bury them like a child.

"Since I wanted to talk, I'll start," he says. He speaks quietly. He makes an effort not to sound like he's assigning blame -- to connect with her, to look her in the eye often and steadily so she knows, so she can feel, that he's not pointing fingers. Anymore, anyway.

"I guess for me," he says, "it always felt like I just couldn't ... convince you I really wanted to be with you. I couldn't convince you I was for real. That I liked you, and I liked you a lot. I mean, we were happy together, and I could feel that as much in you as in me. But then sometimes we'd have a little disagreement or you'd surprise me and I'd startle or something and ... it always seemed like such a big deal, every time, even when it wasn't. Every time it seemed like it was secretly proof that you were right all along, I wasn't here to stay, sooner or later I'd run away screaming.

"And the weird thing was, sometimes I could feel you withdrawing like you didn't wanna get burnt. But then sometimes I could feel you trying to hold on too. And both ways, it just made it worse. One was like I had to chase after you because you wouldn't trust that I was there for you. The other ... was like you were holding on to me so tightly you couldn't even feel me holding you right back.

"Sinclair," and he shifts a little in the sand, facing her more directly now, earnest, "I'm not saying all this to shake my finger at you and say you did this, you fucked this up. It wasn't all you, I know that. But there was something in you, despite how much you said you wanted me, that I just couldn't break through. A sort of resistance to the idea that maybe I'd be happy to stick around if you'd just let me. Trust me. Believe in me.

"I guess eventually I just got sick of trying to reach you. And then it just got uglier and uglier until ... it fell apart."

[Sinclair] To anyone else out on the beach right now, they could look like a Normal Couple taking in the sunset together. Maybe met on the beach and the timing was right; she looks like she was headed to a nightclub or a bar, he looks like he was just surfing. Which is the case. They both bend their knees and wiggle their toes into the sand, cold or not. They both drink Coronas. They look at each other. Sometimes Sinclair looks towards the sun going down instead.

So many of the things he said to her near the end had sounded like blame. Not just blame, not just accusation, but like he was asking her over and over again what is wrong with you? and, by that, confirming that something really was. Wrong with with her, that is. Deeply, inherently, unfixably wrong. So many of the arguments they had at the end seemed focused, at least for Sinclair, on how much Alex just could not handle her. And it wasn't just her Rage, her nature, the things she can't escape or change. It was her. It was how strong she came on, how much she wanted him and cared about him, and -- it felt like -- how little he wanted her.

Why are you even with me? she threw at him once, not The last fight but one of the ones from latter days. That one hadn't ended much better than the last, though.

She listens, even if what Alex is saying jars her. Sometimes it's Sinclair who can't look him in the eye, not the other way around. She sips her beer and looks at the water. I was for real. As though he knows sometimes lately she asks herself if she imagined all the times he seemed happy with her. Happier than he was before her. Happier than he was without her. She rubs her lips together a couple of times. Takes a deep breath at least once, exhaling it slowly.

A faint wince to her brows when he says that it always seemed like a big deal when he'd startle. When it wasn't a big deal. When it seemed like it was just proving to her that he didn't want her. He finishes saying that and there's a muscle in her jaw that tightens, but she drinks her beer, and he's close enough to her that he'd feel a flash of rage if there was one. There isn't.

It's what comes next that hits the hardest. And he can almost feel her start to do exactly what he said -- pull away, withdraw, recoil so she doesn't get any more hurt. She feels herself starting to do it, too, and Alex can almost see her chest cave in. When Sinclair looks at him, her expression is faintly pained. Maybe even just... sorry.

if you'd just let me he says and she huffs a breath, at a loss. Takes her eyes away again, looks not at the sea or the sunset but at her knees.

It's a little while before she can answer, and when she does she takes a breath first and lifts her head, turning to him. "Alex, I'm not... going to argue with a lot of that. And I did hear you when you said you're not trying to blame me or put it all on me. But what was I supposed to think? In Chicago and in Rio and when you came back, you were the one who was resistant. I was afraid to tell you how I felt about you or that I was happy with you or that I didn't think I'd ever... have something like what we had, because you always seemed to backpedal if I did. Or worse, basically tell me to not talk about it."

She's quiet a moment, breathing deeply again, and shrugs tightly, once. "By the time you seemed to... open up a little, I already thought that I'd ...I don't know. Tricked or guilted you or something into being with me and you were just too scared to leave because I might chase you down and drag you back if you did."

She fiddles with her Corona's label, then sets it aside on the sand, arms linked around her knees. She faces him again, her voice falling quiet. "I always... wanted you so badly, Alex. And even when we were happy, a lot of the time it seemed like ...you were just sort of enjoying the ride while it lasted." Quieter: "It wasn't just that it was hard for me to believe you wanted to stick around. It was hard to believe that being with me meant all that much to you."

[Alex] "Well," and this comes like an admission, "you had every right to feel like that. Have every right. Because to tell you the truth, it was pretty much a whim at the start. I mean sure while we were in Chicago I kinda noticed now and then that you were turned on by me. And it was sometimes flattering and sometimes a little scary, but it wasn't really something I thought much about. I just figured it was because you're young and horny and I'm, y'know." A wry pull of his mouth, more self-deprecating than cocky, "A hot piece of ass and all.

"When we met in Rio, I'd been debauching it up. I emailed you because ... I guess I kinda missed having you around. But then you showed up and you were all ... fucking laid out and half naked, and ...

"Well. Heh. I was young and horny, you were a hot piece of ass."

He takes a sip of Corona. Plants it back in the sand. When he continues, his voice is a little softer.

"And to keep on telling you the truth -- and fuck, Sinclair, I know this might sting to hear, but just hear me out because I promise I'm trying to get somewhere with this -- I figured it was just a one night stand. When you came back, I was surprised. Happily, mostly, because I liked how you fucked and I ... really liked hanging out in Rio with you. But then you got so angry when I told you I'd been with other girls, and I was ... really taken aback. And kind of scared.

"And I stayed kinda scared for a long time. I mean, I'm not a nitwit. I've seen how Garou treat kin. I know the rules. I knew if you decided you wanted me, I'd have no say in it. You could go to my brother, and fuck, Aaron's great and all but he takes his job seriously. He's honorable. He wouldn't have given you a challenge you couldn't win, and you were so strong. I knew you could win if you set your mind on it. I just ... didn't wanna be a piece of meat.

"It was a long time before I realized you'd never treat me like one. That if I wasn't saying yes, you wouldn't push the matter. Truth be told maybe it took me leaving and you not following to really convince me beyond a shadow of a doubt, but ... by the time I asked you to move in, I believed it. Or at least, I had faith in it. Wanted to believe in it, because in all the time we were together I somehow went from just a casual one night stand with you to something else altogether.

"I would've been happy to stay with you if you'd let me. I was ... "

he says it again, softer this time:

"I was for real."

Another sip of Corona. With the roar of the waves they can't hear the bubbles fizz. He sticks it back in the sand, takes a breath, lets it out.

"But I guess the damage was done by then. Like a snakebite. Things look fine on the surface, but shit's already breaking down inside, and there's no stopping that rollercoaster once it starts. Dumb analogies aside, what I mean is: you're not exactly subtle yourself, Sinclair, but you see the subtleties around you. I guess you saw already that when shit started out I wasn't serious, and you saw that I was reluctant and scared. So by the time I was serious, and I wasn't scared ... you'd already convinced yourself I'd never be. And the way I treated you, the way we fought, sure as hell didn't help."

[Sinclair] He worries that it might sting, but the truth is by the time he gets around to saying that he's already seen the first wince on her face. Because Rio was a whim. Because he was horny and she was hot. Because he took her virginity and he had no idea, none at all, that she'd so given up on bothering with men that being turned on by one was actually a rare thing, and sometimes even took effort to feel. But not with him. It had never been like that with him. Her attraction to him had always been inescapable. Unbearable.

And it stung, too, that he just missed having her around. Different reasons, really. It warms her a little, because... well, he missed her. And she'd missed him. But given that she wonders sometimes if he just got used to having her around, convenient and fun and not much else -- that hurts a little, too. Though at this point she isn't sure how she can feel the difference between one hurt and another, or if she's just so covered in bruises even a kiss makes her ache.

She's looking at her knees then, though, as he says he knows this might sting to hear. But he promises he's trying. Ironically, hearing that he thought it was just a one time thing doesn't hurt. They argued about this already, just before they started to date. However, when Alex says you got so angry, she blinks, lifting her eyes suddenly to look at him as though surprised. But he keeps talking. She looks apologetic, a faint wince of it, when he says that scared him.

She doesn't blame him.

As he goes on, Sinclair's expression quiets a bit. She didn't know this about Aaron, what Alexander tells her now. She does know that Alex didn't know, at least at first, that she wouldn't go to Aaron to challenge for him. That that wasn't how she wanted it to be, that even as unaware of herself as she can be, she knew that going over his head to his brother to take him would only ruin her chances, forever, for believing that Alex genuinely wanted to be with her of his own free and unfettered will. But he didn't know that for a very long time. Even when he asked her on the couch that one time why they weren't mated, he hadn't guessed that Sinclair herself didn't ever want to take something that he wouldn't give.

But even Alex didn't quite believe it until he did leave. Took himself away. And she let him go. Didn't push the matter. He said his No and she took it as ironclad law, however much that iron dug into her.

Her beer bottle is down to the dregs. She set it aside awhile ago, near-empty but for the lime at the bottom. He goes from snakebite to rollercoaster, mixing metaphors (and similes, for that matter) with freewheeling aplomb. He finds himself telling her the truth they're both aware of, that she wants to confirm for him: she knew at the start he wasn't serious. And that poisoned her.

To her credit, Sinclair doesn't go back and rehash what stung and what didn't. The part where she wanted him so badly and she was a virgin and he just fucked her on a whim? doesn't get raked over again. The part where he misunderstood just how deep her attraction to him already was, or how unusual it was for her to feel that in the first place, doesn't really need to get discussed at length. But she does tell him this:

"Alex, I wasn't angry when you told me you'd been with other girls," she says quietly. The surf reaches up the sand, crawls back to mother. The sun's lowermost edge is close to touching the horizon, and the light that hits them is brighter in color, searing her hair til the strands look like brass, like fire. Makes her eyes darker, less ghostly, though not quite more human. "I was... hurt. But mostly I was scared. It felt like confirmation that it -- that I didn't mean anything to you but a good time, and after the way it felt to have sex with you, how... good it was and everything... that made me doubt everything I felt. I didn't know how to deal with that -- I never figured out how to deal with it," she adds, realizing it as she admits it. Sinclair shakes her head a little. "But I never felt angry until I saw you again and we fought about it. And by then, I think I was more mad at myself than you."

She looks down, holds onto a sigh instead of releasing it. "I think for me, that might have just set the tone for everything that followed. That you weren't with me because it meant anything to you, it was just... we were so good in bed together. And you liked having me around, hanging out, all that. But that it wasn't something you really cared about keeping. Or losing."

Sinclair licks her lips and, after a moment, is able to meet his eyes again. Sooner or later she'll spend enough time in the sun in Southern California that those freckles of hers will vanish into a tan. But for now they dust her nose, her cheekbones, so small and faint they're hard to see in this light, even. "I know that changed. I just... yeah." She nods a couple of times, small bobs of her chin. "I could tell you were scared, for a long time. And even after you kept wanting me to move in, I couldn't tell that you... maybe weren't anymore. At least not as much. To be honest, I put off moving in for awhile because it just confused the hell out of me. I could not understand why you wanted to like... live together and meet my parents and talk about becoming mates if you didn't have strong feelings for me. As strong as my feelings for you."

She frowns, looking at his arm for a moment, her eyes dropping in thought more than refocusing somewhere. "I think... even when you'd seem happy and affectionate and ...intimate, I guess, I'd be all warm and happy at first and then this cold voice inside would jump in and tell me I'd misread you before, I was probably just projecting, or... stuff like that. And then I'd feel afraid all over again."

And hold you, though this echo doesn't come aloud, so tightly that I couldn't feel you holding me back.

[Alex] "You weren't projecting."

All this time Alex has been, quite truthfully, uncharacteristically quiet. She might've never seen him like this before, not in all the time they spent together -- not even after she moved in, saw him not just when he was laughing or loud or arguing or fighting but when he was reading, when he was watching a movie, when he was hanging out on his laptop, when he was playing his drums, when he was sleeping in their bed. She might have never seen him this serious for this prolonged a period. This --

aching, perhaps. There's ache in that one sentence, and as though he hears it himself, is mildly embarrassed by it, he reaches for his beer and drinks. Drains it down to the dregs.

The sun has touched the horizon, that subtly curving line where sky meets sea. Alex squints out at it, then turns to look at Sinclair.

"I was really into you. I really wanted us to be together. And work. Even if it was tough, even if sometimes you really did scare me on a primitive, lizard-brain level. I wanted us, and I wanted you.

"Can you believe that now?"

[Sinclair] There are other people watching the sunset more than they watch each other. Couples, people standing alone, surfers out on the water straddling their boards. There's one guy in a suit with his shoes off and his tie loosened and his slacks rolled up to go walking out on the sand. It's quiet, even though far down the beach there's still the sound of music playing and people in the bar they almost went to. That's all distant, though, and the coming of night seems much closer.

Sinclair watches Alex, the way she sometimes watched him when they were together. Hell. Before they were together, even, when her watching him either flattered him or scared him if he gave it any thought at all. But she'd watch him when they would hang out at his place together, as though sometimes she couldn't take her eyes off of him, or didn't want to, or saw no reason to. Sometimes she was convinced she was dreaming, because she'd longed for him. And then, though she never saw the transition between reluctance and willingness happen, he was there. Letting her in. Letting her be near.

She's looking at him when he stops squinting at the sunset and turns back to her again. He can see where the words start to sink in. Not when he says that he was into her. A little when he tells her he wanted them to be together. It starts to find its way into her when he says

I wanted us

I wanted you.

For a moment or two she does nothing but look at him. Then: she exhales a breath it wasn't obvious she was holding, and she nods. Not for long, though, because she asks him then, her voice soft: "Do you still want me?"

[Alex] The answer isn't immediate. It wouldn't mean much if it was; if it was just kneejerk, a whim, the way Alex asking Sinclair wanna go up to my room? was a whim. Was kneejerk.

This is not. This takes deliberation, and thought, because even though he asked her to talk because he wanted to go over the past, see where they went wrong, see how the good thing they had turned sour, see if it was fixable, see if they could try again --

that's not the same thing as simply saying: i still want you. i already want you, and i don't have to try.

So there's that moment, that deliberation, that thought. She can see it flickering in his eyes, which are that friendly-looking hazel, even though Alexander is not a friendly man, is perhaps not even a very good man, though he is strong. And loyal, in his way. And tough, and a survivor, and

the one her spirit calls mate.

He nods then, once or twice, slowly. Then again, with more certainty. "Yeah," he says; their voices are almost whispers now. "I do."

And instead of asking, do you want to try this again? --

"Do you still want me?"

[Sinclair] She thought so many times back in Chicago of things she wanted to tell him. Wanted him to know, needed him to hear even if it made him balk. There's video recordings on her GW.Net account that are set to email themselves to certain people -- her parents, her packmates, him -- should she fail to enter a particular passphrase within a certain regular timeframe. The idea is: if she doesn't type it in, that means she's died. That means her accounts need to be taken care of. Sinclair is a Galliard. History recorded means nothing if no one can access it. Her life means nothing if no one knows what it was really like.

Including these things she's not telling him right now, because right now she thinks this might not be the last time she sees him. Maybe not. Maybe she can change some of those recordings. So she's not telling him that what her spirit tells her when she's near him, when she thinks about him, is:

mate. love.

Not because he's nice. Or even friendly. Or -- at times, and she never had any illusions about him the way Marrick did, the way plenty of young, horny girls have -- even that likable. But very strong. Shockingly intelligent. Hardworking to a fault. A little bit vicious, a little bit violent, intensely competitive. And from the start, in a rather feral way, Sinclair was drawn to him for all of that, in spite of the chips on his shoulder and the insecurity she could sense and the fact that he was afraid of her but never tried to tell her he wasn't. Which just told her: smart. strong. honest. Which, to a creature like Sinclair, all mattered a great deal more than: nice. friendly. sweet.

Though there were moments. Moments of kindness. And friendship. And tenderness. Just for her, it seemed. Just when they were alone, and he was exhausted from the three, four times they'd fucked vigorously and athletically in his bed or his shower or his couch and all he could do was tangle his arms and legs with her, look at her a little before his eyes fell closed and sleep dragged him under. There was patience in him, and some degree of empathy, and for all that she could see those thing clearly, it never fooled her into expecting him to be a Nice Guy.

She did a damn good job of fooling herself into thinking he was a Liar, though. Somehow. Alex, never doing shit he didn't want to do, bucking anything that felt like a yoke, lashing out at people just because it helped him assert some kind of power in a world where he was all too aware of how little he had over his own destiny --

somehow she made herself believe that every time he wrapped his arms around her and nuzzled her and told her he was glad she was there, he was lying.

Looking at him, waiting for him to answer her, reminding herself to breathe slowly and naturally, these thoughts go through her mind. And coalesce slowly into a realization she doesn't voice.

Jesus. How much do I hate myself?

Alexander nods slowly, finally, and her heart breaks in such a way that is more like a lock clicking and an iron box bursting open, turning into something else entirely. Outwardly it makes her take a breath, a little bit sudden, and then she does it again when he asks her if she still wants him, only this time it's exhaled as a huff of something not quite like laughter.

"All the time."

[Alex] If there was any doubt left in her, perhaps it evaporates now as the tension in his face -- seen only in retrospect, only when it's gone -- evaporates in the same instant she answers. It lifts like a shroud, clearing his brow, untensing his jaw. He grins suddenly, exhaling a sound much like hers, close to a laugh but not quite.

"All right, then."

He reaches out to her. There's a bit of sand on his fingers, on the side of his hand, and it gets in her hair as he wraps his palm behind her neck. She's so intensely warm, but then so is he: a tightly-wound, dense core of energy. He pulls her toward him, bumps foreheads with her, and they're neither of them gentle people, neither of them fragile. The contact really is a bit of a collision, a bit of a thud, and that makes him laugh in truth; makes him laugh until his eyes close and his mouth touches hers.

It's a gentle sort of kiss, though. Sweet, even. And honest. A moment later his eyes reopen and he draws back a little, exhaling, some lingering tracery of that grin still on his lips.

"All right."

[Sinclair] It's a little bit too contrived for either of them to tolerate to share the sort of drenching, passionate kiss of reunited lovers while sitting on a beach at sunset. Sinclair was half to a laugh, albeit an aching, disbelieving one, when she answered Alex's question, and it strikes her powerfully when something very much like relief touches Alex's eyes in the wake of hearing it. And she smiles at him, her eyes the only revelation that she's a tad overwhelmed.

She goes to him easily, as she always did, whenever he'd touch her. She doesn't care about the sand, but then: she wouldn't. It's the first time he's touched her since she can't remember when and her pulse skyrockets in answer. What he gives her first is that, and then a mild sort of headbutt, which makes her laugh, and then he kisses her,

It's also a bit contrived, a little too sentimental and cinematic to say that Sinclair melts. Or soars. But that is, unfortunately for anyone's cynicism, what happens. Both, in fact, and at the same time. The ground drops away and so she, by virtue of the sudden absence of gravity, lifts.

They haven't talked about how this is going to work. He told her earlier what he's been up to since he left Chicago and what he's doing now in SAn Diego, but other than maybe we have a second chance and do you still want me? they haven't figured out anything else. They've talked. They've figured out what went wrong and there's been some measure of self-revelation that Sinclair, at least, couldn't find on her own or even with the help of her packmates for months.

And the truth is, she's still a little afraid. That voice in her is trying to be heard even now, telling her ...well. Any number of things. She's actually ignoring it rather well at the moment, though she knows well enough to know it will continue to speak up sometimes. At some point she's going to have to slow down and ask Alex how he wants to do this and if she should just back off and let him take the lead, make the first move and all the moves after that to boot. At some point she's going to have to try and work out with him what they're going to do when they each have their own separate moments of inward panic, because even Sinclair isn't so naive as to think that one solid conversation is going to Fix Everything Forever and Ever.

It isn't about everything being perfect now, or easy. It isn't about what's contrived or trite. It's quite simple, actually. For now.

Sinclair's soot-dark lashes lift up when Alex draws back a little, his hand still in her hair, lips smiling. Her arms unfolded from her legs sometime when he was reaching for her, one palm going to the sand where she sits, the other arm still draped over her knees, her body twisted at the waist to turn towards him. That's the hand, her left one, that comes to the side of his neck, fingers laying across the back of his neck, thumb crossing his jaw. Her touch is a little lighter than his, for all her warmth, as though she still doesn't want to come on too strong, move too fast, scare him off.

There's no hesitation in it, though, and that makes a great deal of difference.

She kisses him again. Gentle, still. Sweet, still. And slow. Sinclair deepens it, doesn't care right now if they're in public or if it's some kind of iconic sunset kiss or -- any of that. There's heat in the way she kisses him, and traces of hunger. Mostly: invitation.

Also: trust.

[Alex] So that kiss deepens, and deepening, brings Alex's hands to Sinclair's face, into her hair. He tastes faintly of salt from the sea. His hair is still a little damp, short as it is, and dried sand sloughs from his shoulder as her hands brush across his skin.

When they move a little closer, their mouths opening to each other's with more hunger, more warmth, her knee presses into the side of his thigh. The neoprene of his wetsuit is, in truth, rather clammy and cold, but his skin is warm and dry.

The kiss breaks -- Alex's brow against Sinclair's, the man himself taking a sip of air before raising his eyes to hers.

"Do you wanna get outta here?" he asks -- playful, and then serious. "Do you wanna move back in and ... try us again?"

[Sinclair] It does eventually have to break. For air, for sanity -- at least Sinclair's. She is not so young and horny as to be that quickly spurred out of control, but she is hungry, and she missed him, and he's... well. He's letting her. And try as she might not to think of it that way, it will be awhile before Sinclair gets better at remind herself of the truth: he's never done anything he didn't want to. If he wanted to pull back sooner, not kiss like this on the beach, not kiss like this right now, not kiss like this at all, he would make it clear.

She needs a breath when they part, too, her eyes half-lidded, dark lashes cutting across her cheeks. That's the first thing Alex sees when he raises his eyes from the bridge of her nose, the uppermost curve of her lips: her eyelashes. Then her eyes, meeting his.

Alex isn't imagining the beginning of a nod to that initial, playful question, though it stalls and Sinclair almost blushes but not quite when she realizes that he's playing, or that at least there's more to it. She doesn't move away, preferring right now to stay close, not because that way it's easy to pretend that nothing ever happened and everything is fine -- both of them are too smart for that, too hard -- but because he's warm, and he feels as good to be close to physically as a packmate. Only different. Very different.

"Move back in?" she echoes, a little surprised, but not shocked. "You'd be okay with that? Right away?"

[Alex] "It is a little ... 'whoa'," he admits, because -- yes, he's honest, he says what he means, he does what he wants and not what he doesn't, "but mainly because when I got up three days ago I didn't think I'd ever see you again, and when I got up yesterday I wasn't sure you'd even agree to meet me, and --

"Yeah, it is sudden. But I guess ... well, we're not teenagers." He laughs a little at his own joke. "We're not gonna play does-she-doesn't-she, does-he-doesn't-he games about this. I still want you. You still want me. We can do the whole dating, living apart, inching closer and closer song and dance ... or we can try to pick up where we left off. Only this time, try not to be so dumb about it. Try to remember everything we just talked about whenever it starts getting hard, or weird, or you start thinking maybe I'm not into you, or I start thinking maybe it's just not worth it because you'll never believe me, or...

"Just try to remember it is worth it, and we are ... good together."

A pause.

"Besides," another admission, this, "living with you was always my favorite part. I mean not just the sex and the whoamance but ... cooking ramen. Playing Xbox. Watching that pet robot of yours clank around my laundry basket. We don't have to jump back into the whole shebang if you don't want, but -- I do miss having you around."

[Sinclair] When she got up three days ago she didn't even know where he lived now. One very lonely, very dark night before the winter solstice -- and the eclipse -- she'd driven by his old place. She didn't even have to poke her head around. He wasn't there and she could sense it. She wouldn't have gone by in the first place if she'd thought he was there, to tell the truth. It was not her best moment ever. Not the worst, either, but pretty low on the list recently.

She's still touching him. And not pawing at him, running her hands all over him as though to reassure herself that he exists, but she has her hand still on his jaw, his face, and right now would be perfectly happy to curl up against his side and just not move for a few hours. The threat of oncoming cold as night falls doesn't concern her; she's warm enough for both of them. And Alex is warm enough for her.

A wry half-smile at his talk of inching closer together. They didn't do that to begin with, really. He didn't seem to want to be with her and so she mostly left him alone. He asked her up to his room and so they fucked. Then they argued. And then they were together. And a little while after that, she moved in. Simple as that, however awkward the beginning.

Worth it. Good together. Simple as that, too.

And it means something, coming from a man so vocally -- and even unnecessarily, sometimes -- attached to his own freedom. That he wants her to live with him again. That of all the things they had, that was his favorite. She liked it, too. The stupid laundry basket where Tripoli could sleep and play. The drums. The video games. The random meals they'd figure out from whatever was in the fridge and not going bad when they didn't feel like making a run to Islands or out for pastrami or something. It was good. It was nice. It felt right.

Something passes through her eyes, though, when he finishes speaking. A shadow, quick, before its dismissed. Then she leans forward and gives him a soft, small kiss, cupping his lower lip between her own for a moment before she pulls back and finds his eyes again. "To tell the truth, Alex, I'd give my right arm to go home with you again," she whispers. "And I don't want to pretend that I'm still figuring out if I want to be with you or how serious I am about you or anything like that. I know.

"So yeah," she finishes, still quite soft, "I do wanna get outta here."

[Alex] [empathee: what shadow!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 4, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Alex] He catches that shadow. He catches that she dismisses it, too, and he doesn't make a big deal of it. Because god, that was always part of the problem, wasn't it? Every little thing became a big deal, until the peace between them was as fragile as glass, and the arguments, the fights, the wars -- so, so bloody.

There's this much, though. He puts his hand on her face too, his palm to her cheek, his fingers along her cheekbone. He looks at her a moment, looks right at her, frank and open. And he smiles.

"Okay," he says. "Let's go home."

A hand planted on the sand helps him vault to his feet, and from that alone she can tell he still keeps himself assiduously fit, he still works out and runs and trains and, very likely, fights for money. And for other things now, too, it seems. He mentioned it in passing, earlier. Getting more involved. Taking -- god forbid -- more responsibility.

He holds his hand out to her to pull her up. He knows she doesn't need it. He wants to hold her hand anyway.

[Sinclair] It was always a big deal, and she never believed him when he tried to assure her that he wasn't scared. Then again, he sometimes flipped out when he'd flinch or something and she'd get upset and then he'd blow his stack and -- bloody. Yes. That's one way to put it.

She smiles back at him, and it doesn't seem forced. It seems warm. She hasn't needed to tell him where she's been staying -- if he heard about Will he probably knows Will is a college student. Maybe she's been staying with her aunt and uncle at the hotel or in a motel room herself, who knows. Maybe she's sleeping in her car -- he knows she'd feel more than safe doing so. That she's done it before, when she didn't move in with him not because she doubted his intentions but because she just... needed her own space for awhile, for reasons she doesn't even remember.

Maybe simply because she's young, and her first boyfriend since high school was asking her to move in with him.

If Sinclair stood first, she'd offer him her hand, too. Neither of them need it. They're graceful, athletic folk -- always were. They likely wouldn't, either of them, want someone who needed to be helped to their feet or wanted it on some chivalry-based level. But she takes his hand anyway and pulls herself up after him, keeping their hands together even after she's on her feet. Her shoes are dangling from her free hand. Her Corona bottle and his -- and his board -- are still stuck in the sand.

The sky overhead is indigo now. The sun is gone, having vanished below the horizon with a silent blip!, and only right above the ocean does the sky retain any light blueness.

She looks at him, holding his hand. "I don't want this to be a big deal," she says, as an opener. "I don't want you to argue with me feeling like this or insist to me that I took it wrong or get frustrated with me because I did take it wrong. I know -- and I didn't know this when I showed up here tonight -- how fucking insecure I can be." Her tone is gentle, just... wanting to avoid starting all of this out again with an argument. Just wanting to try, perhaps, to be honest without it turning into World War III. "But it sets me off a little when you say stuff about... having me 'around' or whatever. Like it's just nice to have the company, or --"

Saying it aloud, she winces, glancing away, quieting for a moment. He can see her lick her lips, bite her lower one briefly, before she turns back to him.

"I'm trying," she says. "And I'm going to keep on trying to not read the worst into every little thing. So if I tell you that some little thing bothered me, just remember I'm not telling you to fix it, or saying it's even your fault, you did something wrong and hurtful. If anything, I just want you to know so you can see where the weak spots are." Sinclair squeezes his hand gently, her eyebrows flicking as her head cants to the side. "Okay?"

[Alex] There's a flicker of resistance, to be sure, just as there was a flicker of shadow when he said the words that set off her insecurity. That was part of the problem all along. She was insecure, and he was so fucking impatient, so fucking intolerant of that insecurity, so unwilling to work with her, to be gentle. Found it so much easier to throw it in her teeth. What the fuck, why the fuck, why can't you just believe me, what is wrong with you.

What is your damage.

And that instinct -- it's still there, a flicker of it, a flash, just as her insecurity is still in her. One good conversation isn't going to eradicate it. Isn't going to Solve Everything (tm). One good conversation and nearly a year apart to think, to ache, to wish things differently, though: that's enough to make him control that impulse. Check it. Stamp it out.

She can see him take a breath, and then nod.

"I missed you," he amends, trying now, saying it differently. "I missed having you close to me. And I know I didn't have to fix it, but -- I did want you to know what I meant."

He leaves the bottles where they are. Picks up his surfboard, though, tucking it under his arm. Sooner or later they'll have to let go of each other's hands. He'll have to peel out of his increasingly uncomfortable wetsuit. He'll have to get on his bike, too, and ride home, and Sinclair'll have to drive her El Camino, though --

in all truth, he wouldn't be surprised if she rode with him, arms wrapped around his taut midsection, leaning against his back.

[Sinclair] She smiles faintly. Not when he comes back and tells her what he does about what he actually meant, but when he explains that he does just want her to know what he meant. It isn't a faint smile because she's secretly, inwardly sad. It's faint because it's small, and because as it moves on her mouth she reaches for him and lets go of his hand. Wraps both of her arms around his neck and just...

hugs him. Not to kiss him or feel his body warm and hard against hers. Just to hug him tight and hold him for a moment. "I know," she says quietly, then laughs a little at herelf. "I do know. I just... "

It's just: she's got more than one sunset epiphany to go before she understands all the self-loathing and repression and insecurity she has floating around in her. She's got more work to do than one solid conversation. But she knows it now, though, and that makes a great deal of difference. And Alex is willing -- even if it's hard for him, too -- to try and work on it with her. Work on his own bullshit alongside her.

"Thank you," Sinclair finishes instead, soft enough that it means both his patience as well as... everything, tonight. Her arms slide back and she moves back a bit, grabbing the bottles of Corona while Alex grabs his board. It's difficult to get her shoes and two glass bottles with one hand, the other going back to join his, but she manages. "Before you change, give me your new address, okay? And I'll head that way."