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."