not a proposal.

[Alex] There's no flicker of tension in him. Not even a hint of it. There's a little pause, and then he smiles quietly at the ceiling because she's not there to see it. His heartbeat is solid and strong beneath her ear; his chest wall much the same, sheathed in muscle, ringed in bone.

Strange, but in all this time she's never seen him fight. A match that is. She's seen him spar. She's sparred with him. She's seen him fight for his life alongside her now, but -- not in the ring, not in the cage, not against an evenly matched opponent, no more or less than himself. She's never seen that purest and most savage outlet for his competitiveness - gloves up, feet quick, fists quicker, jabbing and circling and clinching, throwing, ground'n'pound.

It never feels like grounding 'n pounding when she's on top. Given a couple seconds he can certainly make a dirty joke out of that, but -- there's no inherent sense in him of being lesser, somehow, by being under her. Subdued. Submissive. It's not about that. Sometimes he feels most tender toward her when she's clinging to him, grasping at the pillow or the wall or his chest or his side as she's writhing on him, whimpering like she doesn't know what to do with herself, riding out an orgasm on him.

Sometimes he feels most tender toward her when she's like this, drowsing side by side and face to face with him,

calling him hers, even if she's never said it aloud before.


A long time ago he asked, why aren't we mated yet? And that was so soon before they broke up that sometimes he feels almost like that question was cursed. Or at least, was some sort of catalyst for the end. Why aren't we mated yet led to her wondering if he really wanted to be mated at all, which led to him trying and trying and finally getting sick of trying to convince her, which led down, down, fights, battles, endings.

Some part of him is almost hesitant to ask something like that again. But then in the end it's not a question at all --

"Maybe," he says quietly, "when things are settled here in San Diego, and you're ready to go back to Chicago, we can stop by Miami. Maybe we can talk to my brother ... about us."

[Sinclair] There's no tension in her to say it, to say it while he's awake, where he can hear it, and there's no answering tension in him to hear it. Just a smile she can't see, because she's drowsing again now, ready to sleep even before he suggested, without a hint of shyness, that they fuck. So she doesn't have to relax anything afterward, wasn't really waiting on a reply.

At some point or another she might be able to watch him fight. He might invite him to a match, but it's also possible they haven't brought it up because they both know the danger inherent in that. She is what she is, and makes no apologies for it, does not promise him she can change it or even restrain it. She knows that on the wrong night, the wrong mood, some asshole in the ring might pull something that sets the rest of the crowd to booing and jeering and she. Will. Snap.

Sinclair likes to see Alex at the top of his game, brimming with a certain dark energy when he comes back and he's smirking and paid and snorting at whatever bruises or lacerations he has. She knows what his body can do. But she's wary, even now, of her own control. Of whether she can handle seeing some jackoff punch him in the face. If that won't be such an affront to her, trigger such an inward revolt, that she'd end up too angry, too upset, too anything to finish the evening, to enjoy the match, to even be proud of him.

He's hers. Even people he's yelling Come on! at shouldn't attack him. Simple as that. There's an instinct there she doesn't know how to get past, and isn't sure she would if she could.


Still new to sexual experience -- not in that she's had little of it, because that's no longer the case, but because she hasn't had this kind of relationship with anyone yet -- it's hard to get Sinclair to talk about it past the point of of Want. Want you. Now. or even I can wait. But want. If Alex has ever tried discussing anything past that point she shies from it, not exactly nervous or insecure but certain unsure of how to talk about it. What's okay and what's not.

She's getting there, though. Getting to the point where she'll be able to tell him what she likes in actual words, ask him for what she wants, say I like this more than this without feeling like somehow he might take that too personally. Sex is still something she's grateful for, on some level, even if she doesn't exactly come down from orgasm and give him a chipper Thank you!

Hard to imagine her talking to him easily and openly about sex, blatantly and boldly telling him what she'd like most. Even on the beach later, curling up to his side and murmuring about that year-old memory of his fantasies, it'll sound like something she thought about a lot, worked up to.

But never once in all this time has Alex been able to miss what Sinclair likes, how much pleasure she's feeling. She's never a quiet little mouse in bed, has to fight to bite the pillow or bury her face in his chest to hide her moans from houseguests. She doesn't squeal and shy away when Alex opens her legs up and tells to lay back, baby, he wants to taste her. She loses herself, and very near completely, every time. Maybe that's why he likes having her on top of him, watching her, feeling her body and soul stripped of the coherence of her mind, abandoned to sensation and desire, unfettered by restraint,

because it's then that there's no doubt, can't be any doubt, that there isn't a speck of what's between them that is based on Sinclair taking what she wants from him, using him, forgetting him.

And maybe when she can talk to him better, when she learns more of the words that Grown Ups With Intimate Relations (tm) use, she'll tell him not only that she likes it when he's on top because he makes her feel so very safe, so very protected, so very wanted like that, but that there's never been anyone else. There's never been anyone else she wanted to have sex with, not really, not since she was a teenager, not ever. That he's singular. That as cliche or trite or fairytale as it might sound, as unexpected as it was, she thinks she was always waiting to find him.

Maybe by the time Sinclair has the courage to do that, Alex will have the courage to hear it.


That question didn't curse things for her. But it haunted her, for months after he was gone from her life. She didn't wonder when they were together whether he meant it or whether he meant something else and she just completely misinterpreted that conversation. She didn't ask herself when they were still living in that shoebox in Chicago if he'd scared himsefl stupid by asking that. Even when they fought.

It was after they broke up that she couldn't stop thinking about it. Couldn't stop asking those questions. Went over and over it in her mind, wanting to know why he'd done that. Why he'd asked her, why they'd talked about going to Aaron at some point, if he didn't really want to stay with her, put up with her, be with her. Be hers. That was when the question started to hound her like a curse, and it was one of the things she never talked to Katherine or Lukas about.

Seriously, how could she even expect traditionalists like themselves to understand something like what she and Alex had worked out? The Kin asking for his own claim to change, the gender issues, the whole mess? And it was private. It was so precious. And so very, very painful.

Which is perhaps why it hasn't come up again. Til now. And when it does, Sinclair doesn't even stir, doesn't open her eyes. She yawns against his chest, exhales. "Okay," she says, the yawn still cluttering her voice. Then the words actually sink in, and her eyelashes flicker a bit. She breathes in and lifts her head, looks at him, and blinks slowly, sleepily.

"Are you proposing to me?" she says, feigning an interrogator's incisive tactics, pretending to narrow her eyes.

[Alex] "Do I look like I'm on bended knee?" he retorts, his cockyassed self, an eyebrow quirking even as her eyes pretend-narrow.

He touches her hair, then. Smooths it back. Leans forward, kisses the tip of her nose. "Anyway," he adds, "if I proposed, it was probably on the beach when we got back together. I think it was always gonna be all or nothing with us. We're ... for real."

Alex grows serious, then. His hand keeps moving, stroking her hair back over and over, hypnotically, as though it had a mind of its own. His eyes are aware now though - no shred of sleep in the muddled hazel-brown-gold-grey-green. "I just think maybe we should just ... stop pretending like we aren't going to be together forever and ever and ever. Stop being afraid of the label, or something. You're my girl. I'm your guy. Maybe we should just make it simple.

"Yours. Mine. Mated."

Then he smiles, his face changing with it, relaxing across the brow, cheeks rounding, lips curving. "Hell, if your parents and your cousins and aunts and uncles want a big white wedding in Kansas with all the relatives invited, we can do that too. We should totally go on a honeymoon in like Easter Island or something, though."

[Sinclair] He gives a cocky retort; Sinclair lightly snaps her jaws at him, about as threatening as a sleeping dog dreaming of rabbits. He touches her hair, kisses her nose, and she nuzzles him as he speaks, tilting her head to the side, finding the hollow under his jaw and rubbing her face there gently before she goes still, Alex's hand in her hair dissolving the need or desire for other motion.

It was always gonna be all or nothing with us, he says, and against his neck, a small smile breezes across her face for a moment. She tries, valiantly, to stay awake while Alex is holding her, petting her like he is, talking to her. Her relaxation is so total it's an effort to keep from drifting off, even if what they're talking about now actually is a little bit important.

Just a little bit.

Dreamily, she wonders if he's said that before, that part about not pretending that they aren't going to be together forever and ever. It feels like he's said it before, she muses to herself, breathing against his chest. She feels a little amusement at how he keeps saying 'we' in regards to a fear she never shared, only tried to tiptoe around. They both know the truth is that his fear and her tiptoeing were equally damaging, but the label never frightened her. Alex being her mate never worried her. Alex maybe not wanting to be her mate, however, terrified her.

"Not to put the cart before the horse," she says, muddled still, though thoughtful, "but... I kind of grew up wanting that." She pauses, her hand flexing against his side, then relaxing again. "I wasn't that weird of a kid," Sinclair says, as though this would be expected, that people look at her and think she's always been this monster, this warrior, this tattooed, pierced freak. Truth be told, that is what a lot of people think. "I mean... I watched princess movies and played dress-up and I think at one point I had an entire notebook devoted to my future wedding plans."

She yawns, interrupting her train of thought, and wriggles a little against him. He's still inside of her, softening, and she laughs quietly at the feel of their bodies still joined, all messy and sweat cooling.

"It's just weird, because there's this whole other world to it now. And yeah, we talked about Aaron and 'claim' and all that a long time ago and I'm really not twelve anymore or whatever. But ...it might be nice."

Which is, through the murk of her words, just to say: it wouldn't be my parents and cousins and aunts and uncles wanting it. which might lead to thinking about Easter Island makes me sad; let's go to Australia which might also lead to you so did not propose on the beach, buster.

Sinclair nestles down a bit closer. "Let's talk about it more when I'm coherent, okay?" she requests quietly, tucking her arms in as though to indicate, yes, it's time for him to use his arms to warm her even if she's all but feverish to the touch even now, compared to him. She yawns again, larger, and sniffs, making a low growly noise in her throat that speaks of satisfaction and contentment more than anything else. "Even if we both want all of that and it's just like... making stuff public and official and everything, it's still kind of a big deal."

She lets out a laugh, kissing his chest and smiling. He can see that, if he looks down, see her grin through a few stray hairs across her cheek that his hand has missed or that have fallen since the last pass of his palm. "Let's just enjoy today."

[Alex] [I BE ROLL EMPAFEE.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 4, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Sinclair] [Some of it is in the post, like the sense that when he mentions Easter Island there's a pang of sadness, and a quiet glee when he says that bit about being all or nothing, when he repeats yours-mine-mated. A vague idea that she's backpedaling a little from the conversation, but not because the idea of talking to Aaron or doing the 'wedding' bit upsets her -- it's hard to tell why she IS doing it, though. The usual underlying awkwardness of Traditional Gender Roles vs. Life in the Garou Nation vs. Alex and Sinclair are Alex and Sinclair.

It is not hard to pick up on the fact that she is happy about the idea that he wants to talk to Aaron and ask to be Sinclair's mate. Or on the fact that the idea of getting married has personal meaning to her and she'd like that. It just doesn't jive with why she's kinda 'eennnnh we talk about later'.]
to Alex

[Alex] It's almost unspeakably endearing to him that Sinclair's eyes all but light up at the thought of Yours and Mine and Ours. At the idea of a white wedding in Kansas with her parents and cousins and aunts and uncles and maybe even the grandparents and greatuncles, greataunts, and his folks from Miami, his brother the best man, of course -- all of them. Some part of him must have known, must have suspected at least, that a girl who grew up in Kansas, who went to church with her parents on sundays and cheered on the varsity cheerleading squad, who fixed up an El Camino with her dad --

a girl like that would want to get married in a nice whitewashed church with a steeple and all. Even if she doesn't quite believe in that god anymore, and maybe never did. It's not about the religion. It wouldn't be about the expense and the fanciness and the attention either, god no. It'd be about ... family. And happiness.

Alex grew up quite different. Most boys don't dream of white weddings; this one least of all. But he finds that he wants it too. For her; only that's not quite it. With her. He wonders if that's part of Growing Up and Being In A Real Relationship. Sharing hopes and dreams, and all that.

What computes a little less is why, when she's so happy about this, she doesn't want to talk about it. He thinks about her saying cart before horse, and big deal, and the flicker of ... uncertainty or awkwardness there in her eyes.

"Okay," he says quietly. But after a moment he adds -- "It's not gonna make me feel all weird or whatever if you actually go challenge my brother formal-like. Just. Y'know. FYI."

He leans forward, then, kissing the top of her head because she's curling into the space between their bodies. "And that's all I have to say on the subject," he promises, "so we should totally zonk for a while."

[Sinclair] No, it's not the religion. It's not the church with a steeple. It's not the dress, though he learned some time ago that he was far, far off in his guess that Sinclair did not own and had never owned something like a skirt and she gets a little gleeful at the idea of getting to wear the prettiest white dress ever, eee. The where and when and even what state it's in -- that's all particulars. That's all detail work, and some of it she cares about, and some of it she doesn't. But it matters that Aaron be there, not as Nightfall's Edge but Alexander's twin brother.

It matters that her parents be there, and get to do all the things they've thought all her life about, because in some way she would like to restore to them some of the normalcy and humanity her Change took from them, too. It matters that her cousins and aunts and uncles and packmates and Alex's mom and dad be invited, have the chance to come, even if it's just some small gathering and the ring bearer is a robot.

It matters that she get everyone in one place, and that she gets to introduce Lukas and Kate and Sarita to her parents, that she gets to see Nightfall's Edge possibly get drunk on champagne, that Tripoli be made to understand that he is being given very-shiny-very-good-conductors-very-round-different-sizes-eee for safekeeping, not keeping. It's about, in part, all the people who have worried about her since she was young or since last year or since whenever see her so happy. It's about family. And joy.


They lie quietly together after that for awhile. She huffs a small laugh, murmurs, I was hoping we could talk to him together and he wouldn't make me do some formal quest-challenge-thing when he tells her it won't make him feel weird if she Challenges For His Hand or something. She curls up, held, and breathes deeply with him. And they lie there, almost certain that Sinclair is going to just drop off the edge any moment now,

til she blurts out, "That was totally not a proposal! I can't tell anybody if they ask that we were fucking! Oh my god, Alex." Said as though I can't believe you.

She wraps her arms around him then, tight, and smacks his ass gently before nuzzling into his chest all over again. "So at some point --" there's no rush in her voice. There's no angst about when, or going back to Chicago, or deadline, or timeline, even. "-- we'll go talk to your brother. And my parents. And then if you want to marry me you have to do it the right way. Which doesn't mean you have to get on bended knee, but you can't do it when we're naked, Jesus."

[Sinclair] [change to: I was hoping when we talked to him he wouldn't MAKe me do some...da da dah]

[Alex] Alex laughs, half-surprised, as she smacks his ass. He wraps his arms around her and tumbles her on their not-quite-queensized bed, rolls her under him, leans down to kiss her mouth. Slow-gentle. Then, smiling:

"Okay." Almost a whisper. His nose rubs alongside hers a moment; his lips graze her lower, her upper, pause a moment, kiss her again. "At some point... we'll go talk to Aaron. And then we'll go to Kansas. And we'll talk to your folks. I'll even talk to your dad proper-like. Declare my honorable intentions for his daughter.

"'Cause I totally do want to marry you. And I'll do it the right way. And someday -- when you least expect it -- I'll totally ask you to marry me."

A pause. Deep in his eyes, a glimmer of want, playful as mischief. When he kisses her again, it's long and deep and god, he knows she wants to just napzonk, but --

" -- mmph." He's nipping at her chin now. Then he's at her collarbone, and he meant to say something about how when he does, finally, get around to asking her to marry him proper-like he won't be naked and messy with her on his bed, but: his mouth is on her nipple now, closing around her ring, sucking and tugging gently at her. His eyes close. He wraps his arms around her. Holds her fast to his mouth and starts loving her,

just like that,

all over again.

[Sinclair] The first hint that Sinclair feels it too, that that growing glimmer of want that's just barely beginning to stir in Alex, is when he rolls her onto her back, his arms still wrapped around her, their hips still pressed together, his mouth coming down on hers and feeling -- more than hearing -- the intimation of a quiet a gasp. It's no more than a subtle intake of breath on her part, quieted almost instantly by their lips sealing together. Her hands are spread across his shoulderblades, her fingertips making a long, slow journey down the dip of his spine while they kiss.

She's smiling when he pulls back, their faces still close to each other, their breath still, frankly, smelling of pecan pie and vanilla bean ice cream. She's smiling langorously, happily, as he nuzzles and kisses her, half-human, half-animal with her. Her eyes drift closed to the sound of his voice, thick and soot-black against her now-tanned skin. Alex just summarizes what they've discussed, what they'll do. He talks teasingly -- but not, she thinks, entirely in jest -- about talking to her dad.

If you asked her in broad daylight what she thought of that, Sinclair would scoff. She'd call it a throwback, and it is. She'd warn Alex all the same that her dad, who at his most bonded and open still had a tendency to grunt more than he spoke and that he only talks for more than a couple of moments if he's lecturing or yelling, that he's a tough read, will probably say they should see what Heather's mother thinks. She'd tell Alex that she really wants to meet his parents, too, even if By Garou Law she doesn't have to, even if Aaron's word on this and Sinclair's are the only two that 'matter'. She'd probably ask him if he thinks they'd like her, because he never really talks about them and she never finished college and if the way she makes people feel makes them worry she might hurt him she might cry.

Technically it is broad daylight. By the time they do actually nap and wake up it will be well past noon and they'll be wanting real food on top of all that pecan pie, though of course they'll have more for dessert. But Alex nuzzles her, murmuring to her about honorable intentions while he's holding her, and all Sinclair does is smile, eyes closed, her pleasure a warm, glowing thing inside of her.

do want to marry you

the right way

when you least expect it

marry me

She opens her eyes, still smiling, looking up at him with her legs slowly wrapping back around him, her hands threading up the back of his neck and touching his scalp. There's that glimmer in his eyes, that curl at the corners of her mouth. She's sleepy and lazy and yet he rolled her onto his back like he did and it's not hard to see the way she's reacting to even being in this position, naked and still messy and smelling like him, feeling that body of his that she likes, even if it's not kept so firm and tight for her sake,

and it's not hard to see how boundless her affection for him is, how happy she is. Sinclair really doesn't know that he's thinking about saying anything else. She just breathes in again when he kisses her like that, his body moving thoughtlessly into hers, against hers, with the strength of it. She gasps softly when it parts, arching her back as though urging him downward, where Alex is going anyway, nipping at her skin and opening his mouth to engulf her breast in warmth, tongue teasing the metal ring there and working her nipple into a hard little bead that sends a jolt down her, tightening her pussy around him.

"I love feeling you get hard inside me," Sinclair gasps then, just before his hips roll, just before he starts to move in her again, fuck her again, love her again.

[Alex] There's a bit of a shiver down his back -- his skin tightening and shivering of its own accord like an animal's -- when her fingers trace so slowly down his spine. The twist and writhe and flex of his body into hers when she arches under him, however, is much more considered. Deliberate.

Her nipple ring is caught delicately in his teeth when he looks up at her. She tells him what she loves, a little tiny slice of what she loves about him, and he laughs into her eyes, flicks her nipple with the tip of his tongue, closes his eyes and closes his mouth over her, fiercer now, as he moves into her.

Starts to love her again.


That's how the morning passes: making love on his not-quite-queensized bed, sunlight coming in his southfacing windows. Alex is a big stickler for which way his windows face. It doesn't matter if the apartment is a shoebox; the windows have to face south so he can see sunlight. If it's a corner unit like this one, he generally wants the other windows facing east. Morning light. In this particular case, they face west. Face the ocean.

They're alone. Sinclair closed down Casa del Vaughn for the weekend. They can leave the bedroom door open, leave the windows open, let the cool sea breeze thread in over their sweating bodies as they move on the bed, clutch at each other, gasp into each other's mouths, come together,

or one after another, panting and flexing and grinding and falling apart like dominos toppling into a well.


This is how the noontide passes: the two of them passed out in a sweaty little pile, tangled together, sleeping. Around one pm they wake up, and they decide maybe they should catch a quick shower and then go hang out by the pool. Alex grabs a sixpack out of the fridge, puts the pecan pie in for later ... after stealing another few bites. They head down to the pool, and yes, after a while they decide fuckit and go across the street and down the filthy little alley and over the seawall to the beach.

They don't bring their boards or suits. They show up in swimwear, they splash around and swim until they get tired, and then they stand in the open water for a while, feeling the sea suck away the sand beneath their feet. Eventually they sprawl in the sand, sunning themselves, and

it's while they're doing that that Sinclair tells him about remembering, sometimes what he said about thinking about her while he jacked off. And there's a look in his eyes, sleepy-fond, sprawled with his head pillowed on his hands; there's a gleam in his eyes when he rouses himself to turn over and brace himself over her, and her mouth tastes like cool saltwater and warm Sinclair, and

before long she's grasping at his back, he's gasping over her lips, and they decide okay, it's time to get out of here before they get arrested.


Tripoli circles their legs when they get back in. Alex pats the little guy on the head distractedly, because then Sinclair is grabbing him and bringing his mouth to hers. They crash into the wall heater on the way to the bedroom, the crash echoing up and down the central air ducts of the building. Sometimes Alex wonders if they neighbors can hear everything they're up to, the fucking and the playing and the laughing and, yes, even the fighting, but then

they're toppling down on the couch and he's pulling her bikini bottoms off and she's pushing his swim trunks down and when he gets inside her it's so fucking good that he moans against her neck, tells her that.

So fucking good. Oh god, you're so fucking good, you're my fucking good little girl, yes.

The windows are open, the sun's dipping toward the west now, sheening off the sweat on his back as he, quite frankly, plows her on the sofa. It's the hardest they love each other today, more aggressive and wilder even than that first time. They start fucking on one end of the couch and the very drive of it impels them to the other, where she sits up and climbs over him and he sits back on his heels and she pounds herself on him, pounds out her orgasm while her hands are cupping his neck, cupping his face, slapping at his shoulders when she comes, leaving welts down his back when he turns her against the back of the sofa and rears up to stand on his knees, pins her there to fuck out his cum into her.


After that they're limp for a while. Limp and spent and

it's five o' clock, maybe a little later.


They wander down to that cantina they like for dinner. It's Friday night and there's a live band, tex-mex music with a bit of surfer flair. He dances with her out on the back patio, laughing, the waves booming in the distance. On the way back, they take the back way again. They pass that abandoned lot and they're not afraid; neither of them are so weak as to be traumatized or afraid.

There's nothing to be afraid of. If anything remained there, it just means the job isn't done, and they should finish it up. The both of them have a certain streak of professional pride, almost competitive. They might not hold down 9-to-5 jobs. They might not contribute productively to society. But they're good at what they do, and they take their jobs seriously -- whether it's prizefighting or reporting on the Events of the Nation or

fighting for survival. Fighting the war.


It's getting late when they get back home. It's getting cool, the temperatures dropping after sundown the way it always down on the Californian coast, summer or winter, rain or shine. Alex closes the windows and Sinclair heats up a couple slices of pecan pie and they cuddle up on the couch -- on his ugly Ikea pillows, under his ugly Ikea throw -- to watch a movie. To have pie.

The last time they love each other today, tax day, his birthday, it's soft and tender, on the couch, his chest to her back, their bodies grinding slowly on each other under the blanket. Their mouths meeting and clinging and parting and finding again and again over her shoulder. Her hand reaching back to pull his hips forward, or up into his hair. His over her breasts, down between her legs.

They're quiet now, soft and slow. Whispering and murmuring, her whimpers undercut by his quiet moans. Afterward he wraps her up in his arms and lays his leg over hers and

they're both too lazy to move to the bed, all of fifteen feet down the hall, so

that's where they sleep tonight. Happy, full, warm, content: urban animals, mates in all but name.

tax day pecan pie.

[Sinclair] It's Tax Day. Not that it matters; Alex did his back in January like smart people. Tricky business when your income comes from a dozen different places. Sinclair, on the other hand, didn't do taxes. She, contrary to popular belief, does have income. It isn't very much, but Alex would have to be blind not to know that she does, in fact, have money of her own that isn't just wired to her by her parents or something. Her work is mostly done online, and there's no face to face interaction. The jobs are rare, but lucrative; she makes the cash stretch, and she doesn't pay taxes.

She hasn't paid taxes since she Changed and was fostered not far from where they live now. It isn't some believe that she's doing goddamn enough, she's putting her life and the lives of those she loves on the line to save the planet. It's nothing more than a great big fuck-you to the whole mess of the most human, most corporate of Walkers. Frankly, even if Leon back in Chicago hadn't been a skeeze -- her exact words, when she was telling Alex over pizza one night about some conversation her pack was having in her head -- she would have disliked him a little bit based solely on his camp.

Her prejudices are few, but they are strong.


So it's a Friday, and neither of them are scrambling to submit forms electronically or get anything to the post office. Alex's schedule is pretty much the same as ever, so he wakes up at six a.m. and there's Sinclair next to him, like she has been for weeks now. Weeks to make up for months, and it feels like it's always been like this. He wakes up early, and she's deep asleep, there next to him even if he went to bed and she hadn't come home yet, if all he had was a text saying

cleanup. or

meeting. or

something like that.

Sometimes middle of the night he feels her come in, sometimes he romps her into bed around ten and she's giggling under the sheets and he's trying to shush her because they have cubs or kin or somesuch staying in the bunkbeds and while he's shushing her he's doing other things and then she's turning her head into the pillow and moaning the way she does, a little plaintive and overcome like she doesn't know quite what to do with herself. Sometimes they just brush their teeth and wash up and crawl into bed together and suddenly he's got his arms around her and the world gets very quiet and warm and Sinclair drops like a stone into sleep, breathing steadily against his chest.

But mornings are usually the same. The sun comes up and a little while later so does Alex, diesntangling himself from the limp weight that is Sinclair, who only occasionally stirs or makes noise when he pulls himself away from her. Her long hair is usually askew, sometimes over her face. She sleeps on her left side, turned invariably towards him on that semi-narrow bed, and most of the time she's wearing a pair of panties if she's wearing anything at all.

This morning it's the same. Nothing at all, and he knows that because last night they only slept as their sweat was cooling, as he was gasping as he withdrew from her, and she was still panting softly. It doesn't smell like sex anymore because the windows are cracked and the room is cool from evening, warming up with sunlight quicker than one might expect.

He does whatever he always does in the morning. Sinclair really has no clue; she just knows that when she wakes up she'll be able to smell him in the sheets, know that he's on a run, and she'll stretch out and wrap her arms around his pillow and pull it close, hug it, breathe him in,

doze off again. Wake up to the sound of him showering. Join him after that, arms wrapping around his middle from behind after the curtain rattles on its bar. Her stomach usually growls as soon as he mentions maybe having some real breakfast. He usually laughs.


But this morning, when he comes back from his run, he still has no idea why they haven't had any guests for the last day and nobody's contacted him about staying here for the rest of the weekend. He hasn't had a chance to check the database of safehouses yet, but it doesn't really matter. Sometimes there's people here, sometimes there's not. Big whoop. Not exactly a loss to have the place to themselves.

Front door opens and closes and the smell of nutty sugar and whatever else fills his nostrils. The windows are open, letting out the heat from the oven and letting in the breeze. Sinclair is, it seems, awake and alive already. Jumping out of the kitchen wearing one of his big H t-shirts, a hem-bouncing flash of panties whose color he doesn't get a chance to discern, and oven mitts that look like frogs. She is holding a very, very hot pecan pie. It's steaming.

"HAP-py birthday!" she announces.

Tripoli erupts from his playpen of cans and silverware, arms wiggling upward. "Eee-EEE!" he echoes.

[Alex] Once a very long time ago Alex might have mentioned pecan pie was his favorite. Sinclair's not the sort of wolf-girl you'd really expect to remember this sort of thing -- tattooed, pierced, enough metal bits and bars in her to set airport scanners off -- but then again, she's also not the sort of wolf-girl you'd expect to have such a strong sense of caregiving. Of protectiveness.

She is, though. Most nights now they fall asleep facing each other, their arms wrapped around each other as though to stay close, keep the other safe. Sometimes he's sprawled on the floor in front of the TV playing the Xbox and she's on the couch behind him, and she drapes her legs over his shoulders and scritches his short hair while he sways this way and that to avoid imaginary bullets, curses at the screen. Sometimes he comes home on a Saturday night black-eyed because he 'decided to save the win til next time,' as he puts it, and there's a sort of comingled fierce pride and tenderness in her eyes as she passes him one of his many gelpacks from the freeze.

It goes both ways. Sometimes she's not home til late and he gets a text saying meeting and he asks where, and when she comes out he's snoozing in his little Hyundai that looks, from a distance, and in poor lighting, like an actually nice car. Sometimes she comes home from cleanup, which is also battle, and he tries not to worry or show his worry but if there are cubs or kin at Casa del Vaughn on those fateful nights, they're in for a good dose of Alex-Assism.

They care about each other. They don't really say it much or often; that's not their style. They show it, though. He taught her to make ramen a la Alex. She's teaching him how to kick more ass in Soul Calibur IV. They're tender with each other when others aren't looking; they're playful and tough, and

they remember things about each other. Like Sinclair liking the cupcakes from Vons with the pink-and-white frosting. And Alex liking pecan pie.


HAP-py birthday! greets him as he comes in through the door. Sinclair has plenty of warning to know he's coming -- you can hear him tromping down the hall a mile away. He looks momentarily astounded, and then bursts into surprised laughter as Tripoli echoes the sentiment, or perhaps just eees surPRISE!, from his playpen. There's a can-tab hanging off one tiny finger. Last week there was a pair of thirteen year old cubs here with their barely-drinking-age mentor. They wanted to adopt Tripoli; pleaded with puppy eyes to take him with them as they were hustled out the door. It's not hard to see why.

Alex waves at the little gaffling. Then he drops his gymbag on the ground and shuts the door. "Wow," and he grabs the pie, but only to set it aside and scoop the girl up instead, "mmm," a smooch, "did you seriously get out of bed just to bake? How many alarms did you have to set?"

[Sinclair] "Nooo, oh my god, Alex!" Sinclair all but squeals, yanking the pie out of his reach. The pie which is steaming. The pie she is holding with oven mitts. She sets it down on the trivet it was occupying just ten seconds ago on the counter, whips back around, and all but jumps into Alex's arms. Her hands are still covered by silicone frog-mitts, but she flops them off behind his back as she hugs him, smiling into his shoulder.

Breathing him in.

Sinclair smells like her shampoo, which is this vanilla-scented stuff that costs 99 cents a bottle on sale and 1.79 full price. She smells like his laundry detergent. She smells, too, like freshly baked pecan pie. Which she remembered from last year, when she showed up at his place with ice cream and apple pie that she baked herself, flying into a panic in the Brotherhood kitchen before running upstairs and asking Jenny please help, I can't find the nutmeg, which was probably the last thing Jenny ever expected to hear a Garou say after the words please help, particularly this Garou.

Tripoli eees quietly, happily, settling back into his playpen as he watches them. Sometimes he seems as content as an infant watching its parents together, a sort of instinctive, fierce pleasure in that feeling of security, that sense of shared love. They are mine, and they are each other's, and that is happy. That may, however, be assigning too much humanity to what is, ultimately, the essence of something cold and refined and manufactured. But then again: Tripoli is more than that, as all spirits are. He grows, as the most interacted-with spirits do. He changes. And Sinclair is his most favoritest thing ever,

and he can tell when she's happy. And he can tell, too, what makes her happiest. Who her favorite is.

Sinclair kisses him, quick and light on the mouth, grinning as she's smooched back. Her cheeks are flushed with nothing more than her own joy. She laughs, saying brightly: "Only four! I was excited." And squeezes him, tight. "IalsohadtwocupsofcoffeeandImeanthebigcupssoitwaslikemaybealmostafullpot."

[Alex] Alex, who is in some ways as fiercely a Glass Walker as any Garou, would disagree that metal is cold and manufactured, emotionless. True; mankind has worked metal, used metal, worshiped metal, relied on metal for longer than it can remember. But metal is older than man, older than stone, older than even water and air and wood. Almost as old as fire, as light and dark. Almost as old as time. The vast majority of the known elements are metallic in nature. They're born in the hearts of stars. Fallen to earth, buried for eons, unearthed as clods of vaguely colorful rock. In the sort of pressure and heat that would consume lesser things, they are purified, made lustrous and beautiful.

He likes the little metal gaffling. Because it's cute, sure, but also because -- in some unspoken and usually unconsidered way -- he understands, implicitly, that it's a tiny, tiny fragment of something larger than his frail mortal mind can comprehend. And this little fragment of Something Amazing loves Sinclair, thinks she's the bestest thing ever-ever, loves that she's happy, loves that she's happy with Alex.

That's something special, Alex thinks. That's something very, very special, and it makes him happy because it seems to confirm what he already knows:

the his girl is very, very special.


Sinclair's words are running together with excitement. Alex kisses her near the end of it, a little less light, a lot less quick. He's smiling as he does it and she can feel it against her mouth. He nuzzles her afterward, smelling like sweat and beach air because, seriously, if you could run on the beach you would too -- swaying her gently back and forth where she holds him.

"Thank you," he says. "I love pecan pie."

He plants another kiss on her mouth, firm but quick this time, and then sets her down. Active again, on again: the two of them are well matched for energy levels. He goes inspect the pie, yummming. "I think," he announces, "I'm just going to take the day off. You should totally come take a shower with me. Then we should, like. Eat pie and ice cream for breakfast. And then just... do nothing. Stuff. But nothing sorts of stuff."

[Sinclair] They kiss. Again and again, Alex going to her mouth like he's drawn there without having to think, without having to want anything out of it other than to kiss her. Sinclair shivers the last time, not out of arousal but simple pleasure, simple closeness. And, frankly, excitement. She remembered this time. She's not showing up just before his bedtime and accusing herself of being the worst girlfriend ever. She's taken their place off the safehouse database for a couple of days. She woke up and drank coffee and made a pie, and this is after oh-so-casually picking up dry goods at random during their trips to the store, trying not to buy it all at once because then he might guess because, well.

She knows him. She knows how smart he is. She knows that this meathead prizefighter is actually the holder of dual degrees in Russian Lit and Astrophysics. From Harvard. She knows that sometimes in the middle of playing some stupid video game he will end up talking for five, ten minutes about some thought in his head, some connection between what he's doing or what she's doing or Tripoli and she will learn as much as she ever did listening to her father talk about the principals of materials engineering, of combustion, of the inner workings of a hundred different machines. She's laid there on the couch, hand on her cheek, stroking his hair while he talks, and told him she likes listening to him.

Frankly, she likes knowing how fucking smart he is. How knowledgeable, too. And she envies the hell out of him. Envies his ability to go and finish and do well in his education, envies those days he spent in classes where someone who knew so much just... gave him information and taught him how to look and where to look and what to do with it. Sinclair's no slouch. Sinclair's as sharp as Alex himself, learns as fast as she moves, and in a way her mind is as deadly as everything else about her. But when he talks about all this shit he knows, she listens.

She knows how to listen. She knows how to learn. And she remembers things. God, she's a Galliard. Of course she remembers his birthday, his favorite pie, that one time he said that the reason he likes to eat in bed is because it's the ultimate indulgence -- not just eating stuff that's not lean protein and greens but eating in the place where he does his most leisurely activity ever. She remembers him having to be convinced that the day he entered existence on this planet is something she wants to celebrate and it hasn't got anything to do with being a Good Girlfriend or not.

Might have been the first time she tried to tell him how happy she was... just that he existed. Just that she'd found him. Finally.


So Sinclair laughs. "I know you do," she tells him, and they kiss again, and she's laughing still. "I know! That's the whole plan, baby. You didn't think we were gonna eat on plates in the living room or like, do work stuff today, did you?" Kisses him yet again, this time full, her hand warm from the mitts, warm from her rage, warm from cooking, spreading over the back of his head. She opens her mouth this time, but the kiss doesn't last too long. She breathes out a laugh, resting her brow on his for a moment when they part. "I totally showered when I got up. But I also threw the sheets in the laundry while the pie was baking, so I was thinking of throwing on some pants again and going downstairs to grab them."

She pecks a kiss on his cheek. "You go get cleaned up. I'll make the bed up and let the pie cool a little more and we can eat til our bellies hurt."

A pause. "I solemnly swear I will not have pants again by the time you get out of the shower. Girl Scout's honor." She even does the salute.

[Alex] Little by little, Alex is starting to learn stuff about Sinclair. Not just oh she's really badass or oh she looks really hot in a bikini but... stuff. Little things that you wouldn't know just by looking at her. Her animal ferocity's right there on the surface. Her beauty's right there on the surface. Her caregiver's streak -- that's a little buried, a little deeper down where she keeps that disarming innocence of hers that becomes so achingly obvious when she sleeps.

And other stuff. Her wits, her mind. Her love of knowledge. Once he came upon her reports on GW.net, and he read a couple; was surprised. Not because they were flowery or poetic, because they weren't -- but because even in those dry, straightforward, unadulterated lines there was the sense of a keen mind. An instinctive grasp of structure and argument, of clear expression.

He has stacks of books in boxes. Sometimes he talks to her about stuff from those books now. He's given her his Hawking pop science books, told her they're some the best-written pop-sci ever. They laughed about Hawking's star trek story.

Sometimes right before bed he watches documentaries with a sort of nerdish fascination that he would've never, ever shown anyone else before her.

Sometimes, half-asleep and drowsing already, he murmurs things like pi is beautiful blue.


He starts to protest as she says she's going to go down and get sheets, wrapping his arms around her tighter to keep her from getting away -- but then she promises she'll be back. And pantsless. He grins. He swats her bum lightly as she steps away, then kisses her shoulder as he's heading for the shower.

"Okay," he says. "I'll see you in ten."

[Sinclair] Chances are, that pie and the ice cream they both know is in the fridge and Sinclair all but demanding he take the day off -- which she was going to, if he hadn't gotten there first -- and promising to not wear pants is all Alex is going to get today. No secret stash of gifts under the bed, no brightly wrapped presents. Tripoli doesn't understand the whole gift-giving thing, really, not in the human sense. If Sinclair tried to teach him to give gifts then he might just end up trying to do it every day. With everyone. And then he'd freak out and melt down because he'd be so overwhelmed.

Sinclair also, as stated before, doesn't have endless income. She can't go out and buy Alex some new, hot toy. She doesn't think of it. What comes to her mind, when she thinks of what she wants to do for him, is simple. She thinks about food. Food he likes best, and food she can make for him, bring to him, watch him devour until he's full and sated and warm and happy. She thinks about making the place where they sleep clean and safe and soft. She thinks about the pleasure that tightens up his body and sparks in his eyes and makes him gasp at the sight of her, the feel of her when she's naked and her legs are enfolding him, pulling him closer, welcoming him into her. She thinks about how consumed he is then, and all of it is good.

Warm. Sated. Soft. Happy.

She thinks about Alex being satisfied on every level she can have an effect on, thinks about him sleeping and being lazy and that smile he wears when he drifts off sometimes. And that's what she wants. That's the sort of gift she knows how to give best, that doesn't make her feel nervous or edgy to give -- or receive.

So that is what he'll get.


Upstairs the shower slams on, hot water comes out, and downstairs the laundry room door opens and slams again, the basket full of fresh-from-the-dryer. Upstairs he can dimly hear Sinclair when she comes back. Talking to Tripoli. Singing a little to herself while she makes the bed. Dynamite, because it's been stuck in her head for two days now. He hears her swear when she realizes what she's singing,

"GodDAMMIT!"


When he gets out of the shower, the little door is open and steam is escaping into their bedroom. The bed is made, rather neatly in fact. Sinclair is lying on her stomach sideways across the bed, her hair down and loose as before. Tripoli saw her strip out of pants and shirt and skidded out of the bedroom so fast he nearly faceplanted. He knows what that means, girl-wolf-and-male-almost-wolf-be-noisy-while-polishing-each-other, it never fails,

though he can kind of get it. Girl-wolf has so much metal. Male-almost-wolf likes to put his mouth on that one piece of metal, and girl-wolf gets very loud when he does. Not so with the other, just-as-good pieces of metal! It's very strange of them.

Anyway. Tripoli scooted out awhile ago. There's a light blanket, the sort one might use for picnics, hauled out of Sinclair's El Cam the last time they... actually had a picnic. It's laid atop the bedspread to protect it, and there are two forks, and a pie with two huge scoops of ice cream melting on top of it, and a candle stuck in the middle. She's wearing her underwear still, because they're semi-sheer. Hot pink, a slight V in the front and more subtle one in back. He can see the curves of her ass quite clearly through the fabric.

She waggles her eyebrows, flicks a lighter, and lights the candle.

"I am totally a softcore porno right now," she says, laughing.

[Alex] She calls herself a softcore porno. He's ... walking out of the shower in a cloud of steam, wearing a towel and a grin. So Alex's eyebrow cocks up, and then he smirks down at himself.

"Oh yeah. You're the only softcore porno here, baby."

When he drops onto the bed, he almost upsets the pie. Sinclair has to grab it and stabilize it. Tripoli's out in the living room decidedly ignoring the wolf-girl and male-almost-wolf inside; Alex drapes a heavy leg over Sinclair's, an arm over her back, and nuzzles the dip of her spine.

"Anyway," he adds, lifting his head to find and pick up a spoon, "you're not a softcore porno. You're a Sinclair. There's a difference.

"Do I get to make a wish?"

[Sinclair] That makes her laugh. She's seen his porno collection. She's never seen him watch any of it, though. It hasn't really come up in conversation. Not has it come up in screaming matches where she's snapping ripped DVDs and crying. Nor has it come up as a suggestion for what to watch when they want to curl up on the couch and watch a movie. It's entirely possible that Sinclair has never seen any porn, softcore or not, because the truth is she did grow up a bit sheltered.

She went to church on Sundays and rebuilt a car with her daddy and her mommy did paintings for children's books.

"Ack!" she says, grabbing the pie to keep it still, to keep it from tipping over and setting the bed on fire when Alex jumps onto the bed behind her, his damp but warm towel against her ass. She breathes out warily, setting it back down while Alex nuzzles her. There's no scar tissue where his nose falls; the scars covering most of her middle and lower back are so small, so faint, that though his fingertips can trace over them when his arms are around her, he does not feel them against his abdomen and chest when he holds her like this.

She nestles into his embrace, eyes falling closed for a moment as he nuzzles her. Her head turns towards his chest, nuzzling him back, more heavily, more...animal.

"It's your birthday," she says by way of answer, affirmative. "But it has to be a secret."

[Alex] "Duh, silly," he says, affectionate, not the least bit vicious. He bites her shoulder softly, and then he reaches over her -- warm and a little damp in the spring sunshine, the spring breeze. Both of them are children of the spring, right on the cusp where, in the southern states where they were born and grew up, spring starts turning toward summer. It fits them.

And sometimes Alex is neat and orderly and of the Weaver to a degree that almost contradicts with his brash, boastful self. He got a roomba. It runs once a week, often with Tripoli on its back, and the floors are spotless. His laundry tends to sit in the hamper at least as long as they sit on the shelves, but there's a definite organization to things. He lives by a clock religiously.

And when he blows the candle out -- the candle nestled between two huge mounds of ice cream, on a freshbaked pecan pie -- he actually picks it up, blows it out delicately, doesn't end up spitting all over the pie, ew.

If Sinclair protests, says that candles need to be blown out on the pie, he parrots her back to herself:

I'm twenty nine years old and I can do what I want!

He doesn't tell her what he wished for. He wouldn't, even if she asked; it's so tender it's a little embarrassing, an aching little wish. It has to do with happiness, and the two of them, and her; especially her.

Afterward, smoke curling up from the tip of that little candle, he sucks the ice cream and pecan-filling off the bottom. Sets it carefully aside, and picks his spoon up again. "Let's nomf," he says. "If you hear me say 'if I eat one more bite I'm going to puke,' make me stop. Because I'm not lying, but I won't stop myself."

[Sinclair] She wouldn't tell him, even if he asked, but her wish last year had to do with him, too. A lot. For months it broke her heart to think about it, but thinking about him at all broke her heart. Not thinking about him was worse, though. The idea of him being gone, not even in her thoughts and heart anymore. That was like its own little death, and there wasn't any raging back from that one.

She thinks of it now and she's filled with a different sort of ache. It had to do with happiness. It had to do with the two of them. She thinks of it while he's blowing out his candle -- she doesn't accuse him of doing it wrong. She cuddles close to him on the picnic blanket atop the bed and smiles as he picks up the spoon.

"I will stop you," she promises, and doesn't reach for the other spoon. She just nudges the cooling pie plate closer to him. "You first. Then you can give me some. I won't let you eat too much. We'll save some for later."

She's smiling. This warm, happy smile. She didn't make a wish on her last birthday. There wasn't any cake, and she didn't care, she didn't want anything in the world but what she had right that moment,

the hot earth under them and stars coming out overhead and Alex holding her, god,

so tightly.


They eat quite a lot of pie. Sinclair does eventually pick up her own spoon and eat with him, stealing bites of ice cream, because apple is her favorite, and she wants him to have more of the pie. Truth be told, she never even lets him get to the point of wanting to puke. She nudges the pie plate away when his bites start to slow, and she laughs when he stretches, reaching past her, almost lying atop her to get one more bite, baby, wait just a second, stop wiggling so much.

For awhile they just lie there, he in his towel and she in her near-translucent panites, on a picnic blanket on a bed, their spoons stuck in the pie plate that's missing about a third of its pie. She's turned to face him now, laying her head on his arm, smiling at him, her hair on her cheek. He pushes it back, touches her face.

"I love you," she whispers, and this is still such a rare thing, they don't even let themselves say it every day. Her hand is resting between them, resting on his chest. There's a moment of nothing but quiet. "You wanna nap for awhile with me, baby?"

[Sinclair] [THEY TOTALLY HAD CAKE BUT SHE DIDN'T CARE ANYWAY.]

[Alex] It turns out Alex doesn't only comment nonstop on his own cooking. He comments on Sinclair's too: best pie EVER and omfg so good and omfg I'm dying of sugar while he's gorging himself on pecan pie and vanilla ice cream.

Toward the end he's talking more than he's eating, asking her where she learned to cake, who taught her pecan pie; asking her how she got all the ingredients so fast and laughing when he discovers she's been quietly sneaking them home on shopping trips. Driving her badass El Camino, or his pretend-not-dorky Hyundai that he seems to actually like quite a bit.

When she nudges the pie aside, he does indeed almost climb over her to get just one more bite, baby, wait just a second, stop wiggling so much. But then he's dropping the spoon on the empty part of the pie tin, and they're lying there, and it's maybe ten, eleven am and the day's starting to warm up.

His hand strokes her face as she tells him she loves him. His mouth smiles, and his eyes do as well. "Too," he says, softly. "I love you, too."

And then a sort of glimmer of mingled tenderness and amusement. "Are you sleepy from being up so early?"

[Sinclair] She has to cup her hand over her mouth several times to stop herself from laughing while he's blathering about her pie. She eats less than he does, partly because she's laughing, and partly because it's not her birthday pie. She didn't bake it to eat it, though she likes it. She baked it to share with him. To give to him. To watch him enjoy. She eats with him because she's hungry, and it's a good pie, and because it makes him that much happier to share what he has.

"My mom," she tells him, like it's obvious. "I was cooking with her when I was old enough to stir pancake batter without splattering it everywhere." A bat. "Maybe before. I even had this little kid-sized apron and I'd stand on a chair next to her at the counter and make stuff with her. My dad, too. He didn't bake, but, like, he was the Spaghetti Guy, and I'd watch him slice up steaks he'd just brought in from the grill or the turkey he'd just taken out of the oven. He and I always did the wishbone on Thanksgiving."

But it was her mother who taught her how to make pie. Which is when Alex finds out she made the crust, which is when she admits that he doesn't want to see his kitchen, he really doesn't, there's flour everywhere.

And a little bit later, sleepily, smiling, she nods, her arms gently wrapped around his waist. "Yeaaah," she admits, and curls closer, nuzzling her way into his chest. "And from a sugar coma. And cuz I'm warm. And you're here."

[Alex] She's burrowing into him. He's hugging her closer, reaching over her to nudge the pie a little farther out of the way. So they don't roll on it. So he's not tempted to have another bite. And another. And another and another and another and before you know it he'll be sick.

"I think," he murmurs, "that's an awesome idea. But." And this is when he seems to acknowledge their mutual near-nudity for the first time, his hand grazing down her side to slip beneath the waistband of her cute little panties, "I'd also be amenable to a little sleepy-sex before we zonk.

"Just, y'know." He nips the tip of her nose gently, kisses the corner of her mouth, "A suggestion."

[Sinclair] A little over a year ago, Sinclair asked him if he thought they could really be friends if she couldn't get near him, couldn't be with him, without wanting to fuck him. Without wanting to lick the sweat off his body, feel him hard against her, inside of her, gasping to her. There were times even after they got together when he'd fuck her three, four times in a row, in a handful of hours, and she'd still want more. She'd have to take a deep breath and steady herself, restrain herself, try to turn herself off when lying in bed with him drove her out of her mind.

It's a little better now. The feeling that she's going to lose him any second if she so much as looks at him wrong is fading. He's a little -- a lot -- more open with her, and it relaxes her. He tells her he loves her, and she could sleep forever, too content to move.

But his voice shifts a little, down to a murmur, and instantly her pulse starts to ratchet up. It's some tone he uses, some cadence of his low voice that signals to her primitive mind that he's horny. That he's seducing her, though it's possible one shouldn't call it that when his hand's barely touched her hip and she's already saying yes. By the time he puts his hand inside of her pants, palm moving to cover and caress her ass, Sinclair is quivering faintly, her eyes flickering closed, her breathing changing.

She doesn't answer, as he tells her he'd like some sleepy-sex. That it's just a suggestion, he teases, nipping and kissing her face. She presses herself against him through his towel, wordlessly eager.

[Alex] Sometimes when she's like this it's so hard for him to remember that she's not just this wild, simple girl in his bed. This pretty, joyful girl in his life. Sometimes it's hard for him to remember

when she's rousing to him so quickly and he's laughing for the simple joy of it, laughing as she grinds against him, eager for it already, eager for him and touching him with her hot hands until his laughter becomes gasping. The bed isn't big; it's a good thing they pushed the pie out of the way so no one gets a back full of sticky pecan filling, but it's also occasionally precarious with the pie so close to the edges. Their mouths lock, and then fall apart, he mutters to get those cute little panties off and she giggles, almost, wriggling out of them, and

god, it's hard to remember that this is the same girl that becomes a wolf, that becomes a savage, vicious beast, that can tear most grown men into two with a single snap of her jaws.

It's important for him to remember that, though. Even when he's slid out of his towel and she's shimmied out of her panties, even after he's stood up on his knees, straddling her to shoot those panties into the laundry basket like a rubber band, laughing, laughing until she catches him around the hips and gets his cock in her mouth, and then his hand is in her hair and his head is falling back and he's groaning

oh my god, baby

for all of thirty seconds before he's flipping over and romping her on top and kissing her mouth while she reaches down and gets him

inside her.

It's important for him to remember who and what she is. Even now. Even while she's riding him like a cowgirl on a bronco, staying close and clinging like a burr and working her hips against the counterthrust of his in short, intense little grinds -- it's important for him to remember who and what she is not because he's afraid of it, needs not to set her off, needs to always keep boundaries in mind

but because it's who she is. And he loves her. And he wants to love her, all of her, every piece that she's showing him little by little, even now.

His hands are on her face near the end, holding her close, kissing her, gasping and laughing into her mouth as she rides him to the sort of groaning, gasping, shuddering orgasm that leaves him thrusting wildly into her,

falling apart into her, wrapping his arms around her,

holding her close, close as he comes back down. The pie hasn't slid all the way off the bed yet. That's a minor little miracle of its own.

[Sinclair] If he wanted to, Alex could pretend. He could tell himself they're different girls, that the female wolf who is Fostern, near-Adren, Galliard, Unbroken isn't... isn't this. She isn't the one with the straw-colored hair and the freckles and that innocent way she has of sleeping in his bed. She isn't the one who looks almost hopeful when he touches her, who is instantly, inevitably aroused by the slightest brush of his interest. She isn't the one who bakes him a pie for his birthday, for god's sake. She isn't the one whose brow furrows a little with ache, with want, with something like relief though she didn't even consider sex yet til he mentioned it.

She really was content to just take a nap with him. Lie there and hold him, kiss his chest, and fall asleep sideways with the pie a couple feet away. Be held. Be so quietly, warmly loved.

Completely, too. Because Alex doesn't pretend, or isn't trying to anymore. He reconciles. He tries, though it's hard, to remember that this horny, gasping girl who squirms when he mutters about getting her panties off, who doesn't quite giggle because she can't think about anything that's light or happy or funny because her entire self is being consumed with the sort of longing that used to -- and maybe still does, sometimes -- unnerve him. She kisses him, and their naked bodies are together for a moment, grinding, her panties crushed in his hand still before he gets up, all cocky-grinned and flicking her underwear across the r--

Truthfully, Sinclair's not paying any fucking attention. As good as the sex is, sometimes Alex is silly and Sinclair is just intense and it's not all the time and they're playful and sweet and happy but sometimes, god. Sometimes it's like this, where she's on him like a wave, shocking him out of a laugh and his hand is in her hair and his head is falling back and he's groaning,

just the way she likes him to.

It doesn't much matter how they roll over. Her hands are on his hips, pushing him back, not to get him out of her mouth but so she can crawl over him, pulling her hair to one side, sucking on him for much, much longer than thirty seconds while he lies on his back, time passing differently for him while his fingers try to count out the seconds in strokes through her hair. Try, fail. He says something, moans a certain way, maybe even begs, and she gasps as she lifts her mouth off of him, climbs over him, kisses him without hesitation or fear and takes him inside of her. She moans into his mouth. She rides him like a fucking pony, hands on the headboard and on his chest, clutching at anything for purchase while he grunts, fucks up into her, makes her grind down on him with those hard little whimpers, those escaping gasps.

Right about now it's easier to remember that she's not human. She's not some simple, soft girl who just wants to bake him a pie and make him happy. It's strangely easier to remember that she's an animal, and she's savage, and at times like this she's not thinking. She's not thinking about how happy he makes her or how sweet their life is or that he makes her laugh or that she feels like she's home. The truth is, when he's got his hands on her tits and he's muttering to her about her body, muttering to her about how she's fucking him, Sinclair is stripped down to id, every last coherent thing raked away from her.

Sometimes they fuck and it's like this, and she's incandescent, wild, brutal somehow even if the way she makes love to him isn't. Deeply, primitively honest with her body, and the way it moves, and the noises she makes.


That's the same girl who lies on top of him afterward, shaking, gasping on his shoulder like she's overcome, her cunt clenching in waves around his cock, her hands holding onto him as though she's afraid she's been blasted apart, she's afraid she'll be swept away by wind if she lets go of him right now, before she coalesces again. She doesn't have words yet. She doesn't know who she is yet. She knows only that she's with him, and it's right. So she's okay. So it's good.

[Sinclair] [paws!]

[Sinclair] [*unfolds* no paws!]

[Alex] He's still there, even if it feels like she's been swept away, blown to bits. Smashed apart, like ships on rocks, atoms in colliders. Coming back together like gravity to find

he's still there. Holding her, gasping and shuddering in his own right, jerking under her now and then when she clenches on him like that.

Oh my girl, he's murmuring, almost like this has taken the place of the usual sex-pletive: oh my god, oh my fucking god. Oh my sweet little girl.


It almost doesn't bear saying that this won't be the only time they fuck today. Make love. He doesn't call it that very often, the same way they don't say love very often -- not because they're afraid of the word or because they're too hard and badass for it, but because it seems to precious to say aloud very often. Like something that should be held in a warm darkness, protected the way she protects him, and what they have; and vice versa.

But -- this won't be the time they love each other today. They're young and strong and lustful and so into each other and once upon a time her hunger was almost frightening to him; even now, sometimes she's so eager, so quick to tumble headlong into it, that he laughs and tells her to slow down, baby, shh, slow down, shhhh,

feel me.

Not this last time. This last time was fast and hard and primitive and honest. And now they're collapsed in the aftermath, coming slowly back together; he's already thinking idly of the next time, of rolling her under and doing it again, thinking unexpectedly of Rio de Janeiro, the white curtains and the white sands and the blue blue ocean.

He rolls, but not to put her under him. Rolls so they're face to face, side by side. Touches her cheek the way he did earlier, before -- all this. Smiles softly, lazily, sleepy now.

"You're my girl," he whispers. It's obvious, but he likes to say it. "You're my girl, and I'm your guy."

[Alex] [now we paws! *folds*]

[Sinclair] For a Garou who never thought she'd have friends among kinfolk, much less a love, and for a kinsman who never wanted to be that kind of kin, they've done pretty well for themselves. For each other. Here she is, as close to savage as she gets without shifting, and he's not balking, not running. He's holding her, whispering in her ear as though to comfort and reassure her, help her come back. And here he is, anchor and home to a monster, not because it's his duty or even because she genuinely does need it, but because it being their place and their bed and home being a place where Sinclair belongs with him makes him inexplicably, impossibly happy. Fulfilled.


They like to talk about fooling around, as though that's all it is -- and sometimes that is all it is. They go home and romp with each other, tussle and tease each other in bed like they're seeing who falls apart first. Truth be told, as competitive as she is, that's one game Sinclair doesn't mind losing, and can't help but lose. Alex would have to be far blinder and stupider than he is to not have realized by now how fucking quickly she'll respond to him, how easily. And in a weird way, it makes it less of the sort of competition sex used to be, the vicious game. He never really has to win, with her. He just has to be there with her, however he feels like being.

Talking about literature, or stars, or the Nation, or the fight, or her pack, or video games, or what to try putting in the ramen next. Being a cocky, grinning bastard. Being randomly, suddenly tender. Being horny, finding her under the sheets and murmuring roll over baby and getting that thrill that comes with the sound of her gasping in the dark and turning onto her belly for him. Being the firm disciplinarian with the houseguests they sometimes have. Whatever he is. Whenever. Whether she likes it or not, that's all he ever has to be. There is no winning. No losing, either.

Sometimes there's fooling around, and sometimes they're just calling it fooling around. Rarely, exceedingly rarely, they call it making love, though far more often, that's exactly what it is. A lot of the time they just flat-out fuck each other, wild and hungry and athletic and eager. Not usually several times in a day, lazy and prolonged as it will be today, napping and eating here and there, randomly deciding they should shower and go out to the pool for a swim, then fuck the pool, let's go down to the beach, then laying out in the sun til she rolls over on the towel and puts her lips by his ear

and tells him a story about her own birthday, the first one she spent with him, and how much it turned her on when he told her what he thought about whenever he jerked off, when he was missing her, when he wanted her sucking his cock or riding him or bent over the bed, and how the last thing he told her about was sometimes just stroking himelf thinking about the way she looked down in Rio wearing that tiny fucking bikini, laid out and tanning by the endless swimming pool at the Copacabana

and how now she's lying there on the beach in San Diego wearing some other tiny fucking bikini and she can't stop thinking about him stroking himself hard, getting on top of her, untying the side strings of that little bathing suit, tugging the cups of the top down, fucking her right there on the towel.

That won't be the last time they love each other today, either, when he gets her home after that so they don't get arrested, Jesus, Sinclair, what the fuck.


She drowses on his shoulder right now, worn out from waking up early, baking, riding him like that, working up a sweat that's still tangible on her skin. Alex is still as deep inside of her as she can let him be, as though the physical reality could mirror the more epheremal truth. His cock moves a little when he rolls them gently to the side, and Sinclair gives a little gasp, almost soundless, her eyes opening as her head sinks into the pillow.

"Yeah," she whispers back when he tells her the obvious truth, and it would sound so flat, so dumb, except for the weight of affirmation and agreement in that soft voice of hers. "I'm yours," she adds, even quieter, sliding her arms around his middle and drawing closer to him, her leg hooked high around his hip.

She doesn't say the rest. She doesn't, because it's not 'legal', really, she's not challenged for him or claimed him, she has no right, and she's afraid he might freak out, he --

but then Sinclair softly exhales, no hint of tension having ever entered her body. She has her head resting to his chest, listening to his heart rate slow back down. "You're mine."

picking up the pieces.

[Warcry] Jesus God. Six hours ago she was in this stupid pink bikini, this little chain of daisies across the lower half, swooping along as though to accentuate how flat, how taut her stomach is. Daisies on the ends of the strings that tied behind her neck, behind her shoulderblades. Leaning back on her elbows, smirking at him from behind her sunglasses, her freckles coming out in the sun. An hour ago she had her feet up next to his lap, her eyes frowing lazy with margaritas, and so very fond of him.

The only thing left is the blueness of those eyes. And that intense fondness, even now, as the rage and bloodlust fades, as she looks at him and wants him to go get his car, go get big bags so they can get rid of these bodies. Even as he startles, the monster-girl doesn't flinch. She knows exactly what she looks like.

He hasn't run, though. Not away from her.

Sinclair seems like she's going to move towards him -- there's the precognition of it in her body language, the hint that she wants to be close. And he says, whispers almost, a request.

The truth is, she needs this strength to quickly dismember the hounds. Put them in different bags, put those bags in different dumpsters around the city. And she can drive, she can do this by herself if she needs to, but the reality is that she didn't want to tell Alex to go home and let mommy handle it. She starts to move, and he asks her to change,

but that word barely gets out of his mouth before she's a girl again. Untouched, unhurt, but covered in blood. It sticks to her lower jaw and covers her throat, drenches her shirt. No wonder she buys such cheap clothes. Dedicated or not, she goes through them fast enough. Not worth washing blood out over and over and over again, really. Not to her.

Her hair is down still, loose and dry now except where it's matted at the ends with red. Her presence is still predatory, animal, even bereft of the rage that makes her so intolerable to humans. Without the rage, the reaction is different. It's like facing down a wolf or a bear in the wild, knowing it might be as afraid of you as you are of it, knowing that if you just back off slowly and leave it to its prey it might let you live,

but the truth is, that's not exactly a situation you want to find yourself in either. No more than you'd want to, say, be standing there watching a true monster tear into its enemies. Those that trespass on its territory.

She rises from her crouch even as her form is snapping back to its first state, it's most natural state -- though even Sinclair might argue that warform is the most natural, the true form of Garou, the one that marks them so entirely as what they are. She's not sweating. She's barely even breathing heavily, though her heart is still racing. She thinks; she changes her plan.

"Let me hide the bodies," she says quietly. "Just to get them out of the way. I'll go home with you, and ...I can come back and finish cleaning up." A beat. "You don't have to come with me for that. I can't do it in homid, and I have to call the sept anyway, and..."

Her brow furrows. "You don't have to decide now, either. Just give me a few minutes to drag them out of sight and we can go home and... go from there."

[Alexander and Friends] When she snaps back, he relaxes visibly. It's almost stupid: out of sight, out of mind, like he's some sort of macaque too low on the evolutionary pole to understand object permanence. Still, in this shape she looks like a girl, looks like his girlfriend, looks like something familiar and beloved and

bloody. His eyes flick over her, find no wounds. Come back to hers. A moment later she can all but see his hackles go up, his jaw square. He spoke earlier about being like a wounded feral animal; well, this is similar. A scared feral animal, ready to take offense at any perceived attack on its weakness.

"I'll go get the car," he says. Insists. A quick, humorless huff, "That's my goddamn job, remember?" He licks his lips, then stops when he tastes blood. "You don't have to coddle me and leave me at home with the babysitter. I'm not ... fragile. I just needed to see you in something other than tower of doom form for a second."

Another breath, deeper, steadying. He tosses the surfboard down at last. Fuck if he knows what he's going to do with it, but he knows this much: he's not carrying it all the back right now. He's enough of a sight without a bloody surfboard bouncing on his back. He comes toward her. There's blood on her face, but there's blood on his hands too. He takes her face between his hands for a moment. Contact, as though to say: see? I'm still with you.

"I've seen it now," he says, quieter. "I'm cool. You do what you need to; I'll be back with the car in ten."

[Warcry] Her brows tighten together when his hackles go up. My goddamn job goes over a little better than coddle me, leave me at home with the babysitter, but not by much. She looks away before he's done talking, looks at the side of a building, tense with sudden anger, waiting to exhale until she can calm down.

Sinclair doesn't look at him again til he's coming near her, and she damn near snaps his hands off her face. Relents, though, staring at him. He can see how angry he's made her, how fucking perfect what he just said was. Her jaw is tight.

She reaches up, and puts her hands on his wrists, and holds them. Doesn't shove him away, but holds his hands right there, eyes locked on his.

"I'm not coddling you," she says, her voice low and tight with... anger, a blanket over all the rest, but it's not all there is. "I'm not trying to babysit you, Alex, and lashing out at me about what your 'job' is here doesn't make you look less fragile, it's just you treating me like you're the good kinsman and I'm the Garou who's in charge of you. And any time you do shit like that, you're straight-arming me away and it pisses me off."

She exhales, turning her head so it's not right into his face, flecked with blood and smelling of worse. She looks sidelong at him, hands still on his wrists. "And have enough faith in me -- and respect for me -- to think that maybe coddling or babysitting you isn't actually the reason I wanted to change plans and go with you."

There's something in her eyes there, a tight, hard little ache. Maybe he hates seeing it. Worry for him. Worry for a lot of things. Maybe even hurt that he jumped so quickly to that conclusion, that his knee jerked that hard, that soon after what was such a successful battle when you look at it.

Sinclair draws back now, slowly, because even with that wave of aggravation, she doesn't want to push him away. Least of all, that. She heads towards one of the hounds. "If we hide the bodies first and come back cleaned up and with supplies, we can watch each other's backs to and from the apartment. I can call the sept and find out A, if they have a cleanup team who can get to the area and do a better job than dumpster-stuffing and B, if they have any good dump-sites if there's no team available. If I go back with you I can get the fucking materials for a cleansing rite and not have to waste time giving you a laundry list of what to bring back, which just means it'll take longer, which means me sitting out here in the veritable open with some fucked-up monsters waiting for you to get back. If I sit here waiting for you to get back, I have no fucking clue if you're going to get jumped on the way home or not and right now it's not a risk I can take, and your fucking ego can blow me if that bothers you. And if you're so fired up to do your 'job' then you can help me more as a lookout while I dismember corpses and bag them up."

She's hauling up the hound as she speaks, dragging it towards the shadows, back towards where it hid at the start of all this, as she is talking. Her eyes snap up to him. "Unless you want me to send you home because I don't think you can handle that part. Because I don't know what the hell to do, Alex. I don't want to sit there making you sick and making you look at me the way you're looking at that surfboard like you're not sure you ever wanna touch it again, but if I ask you to maybe not watch me while I tear apart bodies in warform then you think I'm coddling you. So just... fight with me about this when we get home, okay?" she finishes finally, a little exasperated. "I would love to argue with you about this til the sun comes up if we have to, but right now it's just... I've done this a few times now, okay? I just need you to trust that the way I'm doing it isn't based solely -- or even mostly -- on whether or not I'm worried about you."

[Alexander and Friends] She gets to about unless you want me to send you home when he interrupts. Quietly, for what it's worth, saying, "Stop. Sinclair, stop," in a voice that's not so much resigned or raw or bare as it is --

well. Apologetic.

"Baby," he says, quieter still, "stop. I totally misread you, okay? I thought ... you told me to go get the car, and then you saw me blanch because you were growling at me, and then I thought you just jerked way back and started acting like I was too fragile to perturb. And yeah, I should've trusted you more. But can you at least look at it from my perspective and see why it looked just like that to me?

"Anyway. I get you now. And I don't want to fight with you 'til the sun comes up, and I don't think we need to. I get you. So let's just ... go get the car, okay?"

A pause.

"Also, I'm gonna ride that goddamn board again if it takes me three weeks and a whole box of Clorox to clean it up."

[Warcry] She doesn't stop. Not right away. Gets mad when he wants her too, and with a sort of insistence finishes what she has to goddamn say before it all ends up rushing out of her in a breath,

because the truth is, it matters that she doesn't want him looking at her like that surfboard. Looking at her like she's never going to be anything but a tower of doom dismembering corpses of hounds that wanted to kill him. She honestly isn't sure if he can handle that, and that's the truth of it. She honestly isn't sure if they can survive that. She doesn't know how any couple does it, not when one is Gaoru and one's not. She wonders if it just depends on the kin in question.

It matters, too, that he hear her -- or at least that she get the chance to say -- that she's not new to this. That it isn't just about him. Spoken in anger or not, she needs to say that, needs to know he hears her. That she isn't going to act stupid about her plans during or after battle because he might be worried, he might be fragile, he might be afraid.

Sinclair does look at him in the end though, frowning with something more like sadness and weariness and stress than anger now. He admits he misread her, how he saw it. She doesn't say anything. She doesn't tell him yeah, she can understand. Right now, the truth is, she doesn't have the patience for this. Any of it. She doesn't have the patience to talk about it the way she could at the restaurant or even fighting at home. She just huffs a spare laugh when he mentions Cloroxing the fuck out of the board and gives a quick nod.

"Just give me a minute and we'll go," she says. Turns, then, because she has two more bodies to drag out of sight.

[Alexander and No Friends] "Okay," he says.

He doesn't really just 'give her a minute' though. When it becomes apparent she's dragging bodies out of sight, he helps without being asked. If she stays in homid, he lugs bodies with her. If she shifts, he lets her handle it -- goes to gather up their other debris instead. It takes a while to find the surfboard leashes in the dark; the curtain rod.

The night settles quiet and cool around them. San Diego isn't so large a city as Chicago, and not nearly so large as LA. It settles down after dark. They can hear the waves clearly now, a steady rush against the shore.

When they're done, and the bodies are stowed, and the makeshift weaponry are put out of sight, they pick up their surfboards again. Alex uses their beach towels to wipe the blood from the decks, then puts them face to face again, colorful undersides facing out; tucks them both under his arm. Sinclair stuffs the bloody towels into the cooler along with their magically-compressed wetsuits. Not the ideal solution, but better than leaving a pair of surfboards, bloody surfboards, out in the middle of a lot they were trying not to draw attention to.

Then they're ready to go. And leaving the lot, their bodies growing sticky with half-wiped away, cooling, coagulating blood, Alex reaches out for Sinclair's hand again. Their fingers link. Southern california girl with a her southern california boy.

A block or two from that lot, and a block or two from their place, he speaks --

"I know you've done this before. I sometimes forget it because you're so young. My god, you were a virgin. And most the time we're together, you're just... Sinclair, who got all glee'd out because I got her a birthday cake. Sinclair, my girl. So I forget. But I'll try to remember, okay?"

It's a little longer before he adds, "I'd also like it if you'd remember that I've done this too. Maybe not as much as you, but some. So next time, if you've got a plan in mind -- like how to get rid of bodies or whatever -- maybe you could just let me know."

[Warcry] It was never the idea that he wouldn't help, or couldn't help. She stays in homid for now. Maybe that's for his sake. Maybe it's because even if it's unlikely she'll ever be as strong as her Alpha, she's stronger than the average 23-year old female. Maybe, just maybe, it's because not wanting to take warform in front of him unnecessarily is as much for her sake, her comfort, than his. She'd be lying if she said it didn't hurt her to see him so freaked out, frozen, even if she knows it's not, really, her that he's scared of.

So they drag bodies out of the way, two poster children for regular exercise and a healthy sleep schedule. They wipe blood off their faces and move quickly, lashing boards together and stuff bloody cloths out of the way, hiding curtain rods and the like in dumpsters. When Alex reaches for Sinclair's hand, she startles a bit, but then links hers with his tightly, despite the drying, sticky, flaking blood between their fingers.

Expecting silence on the walk home, quick as their steps are, Sinclair looks a little surprised when Alex talks. She sighs, but tries to keep it quiet, and she doesn't interrupt, roll her eyes, or ignore him.

"Okay," is all she says to the first part, quiet. Because in a way it makes her happy that he forgets. In a way, she doesn't want to say goddammit Alex I'm nearly an Adren. She doesn't want to tell him that she's been killing things like this since she was eighteen and wanting to since she was fourteen. She's a little glad that he thinks of her so strongly as his girl, who glees at birthday cakes and hasn't even had sex with anyone but him, who likes to surf and beat his ass at racing games, that he forgets that she's a Fostern Galliard of the Nation, member of a war pack under a totem of war, twice Wyrm-ridden,

Warcry,

Brutal Revelation.

Her hand squeezes his, and they keep walking, and a little while later, he speaks again. This time she looks at him, and they're near his place, which means there's more light, and she's keeping her eyes peeled for people who might see them and freak out. Her brow furrows a bit, but she nods. "I know you have. That's..." she shrugs. "I had one plan in mind. And then I looked at you and you asked me to shift and I thought about you walking home and driving back alone and it changed. So that's what I told you." She shakes her head. "Alex, I'll work on like... communicating to you what the plan is and why, but I'm not used to doing that, or needing to do that. I'm really not used to fighting without my pack, much less with kinfolk."

That might make him tense up. If it does, she lets it go. And when it passes, if it's there at all: "When we get inside, I'm going to use the second shower to scrub the worst off real quick," she says. "It's not you, it's just that it'll go faster that way. And when all this is over and we're home, I know you probably just want to crash but it would mean a lot to me if you'd like... let me ...cook for you, or give you a backrub, or stay awake til you fall asleep, or... just... let me take care of you without it being this big deal about me thinking you're weak or something, okay?"

They're at the apartment complex. In through the gate, towards the stairs. She's looking ahead now, still holding his hand, and her voice is very quiet. "I just need you to let me care for you sometimes. Not because you need me to do it for you. Because I need to do it, and you're the one I want to do it for."

This time it's her turn to look at him and say: "Okay?"

[Alexander and No Friends] She's right. There's a flicker of tension when she says she's not used to fighting with kinfolk. God, but he's so sensitive on that issue sometimes - the line between Garou and kin, the fact that he is, in fact, kin.

He forgets, when he's with her, that she's Garou. And on some level that makes her happy. Makes them both happy. But at the end of the day it's impossible to set it aside entirely. Because sooner or later, something like this happens. And sooner or later, everything they talked about in theory, as a distant possibility, is suddenly in their face.

That flicker of tension passes, though. They talk about showering, about making this all be over, about --

her taking care of him. And he frowns at that, and weirdly enough it's that -- not talking about kin and Garou, but that -- that makes him straighten up, look at her.

"Wait," he says. "I don't really get it. What do you mean, take care of me? And what do you mean, do it for you?"

[Warcry] As much as it might make Sinclair smile inwardly to know that when Alex sees her, he doesn't see the woman who can, even in homid, call upon her totem and quite possibly snap a grown man's neck with her bare hands. He doesn't think of the enormous monster who was crouching in that lot not more than a few minutes ago, growling at him, trying to communicate without wasting energy shifting -- until it seemed that energy wouldn't really be wasted at all.

The truth is that no energy is wasted, for Sinclair, if it's for him. And she even understands that he at once appreciates that, is warmed by that, and resists it, rejects it, rebels against it. She's not a stranger to that kind of internal conflict. Love me as I am, she feels when she looks at him, even as she's thinking but please don't see me as I really am. Sometimes please see me as a 23 year-old girl who squees because of birthday cake lives right alongside please see me as the near-Adren I am, the Galliard, the warrior, the monster, battle-ready but not battle-worn.

Their hands stick together by blood. There's poetry to that, if she had the time right now for poetry.

"Huh?" she says, already going elsewhere in her thoughts, already elsewhere because there's a lot to do and not much time and they just left the bodies out and she's worn out, she's distracted, she's feeling needy and hating it and knowing he needs X but she can't give him X because then he'll --

and so on.

Sinclair looks at him, and takes a breath, looking away again, ahead of them. They're coming to the stairs of his apartment, the gate, heading into the courtyard now to go up to his floor. "I just mean...I've always ..." Telling him -- anyone -- this is hard for her, and it shows. She frowns, climbing the stairs with him. "I like taking care of the people that matter to me," she finishes, a bit stiffly, prematurely defensive. "Sometimes I feel most myself when someone just lets me hold them."

A beat, as they head down the upper story sidewalk to his door. "Most people won't let me."

He can almost hear the undercurrent to that: nobody lets me. not for a long time.

I'm not allowed to be that.

[Alexander and No Friends] They're standing just outside his door now, speaking in hushed tones. They do this because they have a houseguest, and this is a private conversation. Their hands are stuck together by blood. They fought and killed and were victorious together. There's poetry in all that, but neither of them have time for it.

He's frowning a little, that heavy brow of his shadowing his eyes in the wan light of their porch lamp. It's not an angry frown. It's a thoughtful one.

"I'm not really used to being taken care of," he admits. "Even when we were really little, I took care of my brother. And now I kinda take care of my students and my team, you know? I hear you, but it's ... hard for me not to equate being taken care of as being somehow weaker. Or less. Or just weak.

"I know that last part's not true, though. And I ... kinda understand how taking care of other people can be important. I kinda get how letting you take care of me is like taking care of you. So I can try, Sin', but ... just don't wait on me hand and foot or something, okay? Or make me feel like you're doing something for me 'cause I can't do it by myself. 'Cause I can."

[Warcry] She gives him a strange look. It's part wry. It's also part hurt. And that defensiveness hasn't dropped. That sense of rejection lingers in her eyes. And all she can say to that, really, is the truth.

"Sometimes nobody lets me take care of them because I scare them, and they don't want something like me trying. But the rest of the time, that's... basically exactly why. I just wish it wasn't something I have to constantly keep in check, like everything else about me, because ...I don't know."

She shakes her head, and she looks at the door like she wants to go in and get away from this conversation, but she can't remember where her keys are right now, or if she even brought hers with her to their day of surfing. "It sucks that you even think you need to ask me not turn into some like... 50s housewife or something," she says quietly. "And to be honest, Alex, right now it feels like... I'm asking you to please just let me be myself and you're telling me again that who I am makes you uncomfortable. It just makes me... tired."

That last word sounds like what it is. She blinks a couple of times as though clearing sleep from her eyes. "I never would have even been interested in you if I'd thought you couldn't take care of yourself. Or weren't strong." Her head turns, eyes flicking in his direction. "I am an animal, baby. I wouldn't want a ...boyfriend or whatever,"

she doesn't say mate, she doesn't have the right,

"that wasn't fit. But I also wanna keep you warm. And give you food. And make sure where we sleep is safe."

A beat. "And I kind of want the privilege to be the one that is allowed to take care of you, when you won't let anyone else."

[Alexander and No Friends] "Baby..."

He hasn't let go of her hand yet. And he steps closer to her, and this fit strong mate of hers is only a handful of inches taller when they're both in flipflops so it's easy for him to look her right in the eyes.

"Baby," softer, "I know it kinda hurts when it sounds like I'm stiffarming you away just like everyone else. But you gotta understand you're asking me to bend from the way I've always lived in pretty contortionist ways. And I know we talked about this earlier and I know you're not really gonna baby me or make me feel weak, but ... it's still something pretty big, okay?

"I'll try. But you gotta be patient with me. And maybe also not get so hurt or put off if I don't immediately let you in. I'm for real, with you. I'm planning to be here for the long haul. We don't have to hurry on any of this, and you don't have to worry that if things aren't perfect right from the start that they'll never be.

"Work in progress. Right?"

[empafee: seeing how she takes that!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 5, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Warcry] "I know you are," she says quietly, when he says he's for real. Her brow is furrowed, and she steps closer, allowing herself a moment to rest against him, turning her head and laying it not quite on his shoulder but between shoulder and neck, hair against his throat.


[She's definitely tired and feeling uneasy about this conversation because of that (as well as distraction/stress). She's worried more about being allowed to be herself with Alex (ie, being accepted) than about the stability/longevity of their relationship. She's a little frustrated at being misunderstood, but she wants to be close.]

[Alexander and No Friends] Alex nuzzles against Sinclair as she steps into him. They're the perfect height for that, too. His shoulder is warm and firm under her cheek; his neck corded in muscle and tendon. There isn't an inch of him that isn't trained to a sort of fanatic fitness.

They stand together for a moment. Then he speaks softly, "I guess what I mean is, please don't feel like just because you have to restrain what you are a little bit right now that means you'll always have to. There was a time when I didn't really believe you'd really just let me go free if I wanted to leave. There was a time when I would've probably run away from you after we put down that last dog tonight.

"Shit changes. I'm getting to know you more and more. And I'm learning to accept you too. Every part of you. I guess it's a little weird that I accepted the part of you that's a nine foot tower of doom faster than I can accept the part of you that wants to take care of me even if I'm not weak, but ... I'm getting there, too."

[Warcry] They are warm and fit and strong. And bloody. They wiped most of it off their faces but she can still taste it in her mouth. There are still flecks on his face, in his hair, where it flew when Sinclair tore beasts apart not three feet from where he stood. She hasn't put her arms around him but he nuzzles against her, and they stand together at his doorway, time ticking away around them.

She listens, and he can't see her face or her eyes now to try and tell how she's taking it, but after he finishes speaking, her hand comes up and rests on his back, between his shoulderblades. He can feel her take a deep breath against him, and he might be able to tell that her ear is against his chest, listening to his heart beating, as strong and steady as ever.

Then she lifts her head and looks up at him. Close, he can see the faint remainders of what she is drying on her skin, in her hair. He can see the hints of all the extremes she is in those pale, ethereally soft eyes of hers. She just nods, and smiles a small smile. "Let's go in," she says. "We've got Shit to Do."

[Alexander and No Friends] [i look!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Warcry] [That helped. It's not clear just why it helped, but she seems much more settled as far as the two of them are concerned and ready to Get On With Bizniz.]

[Alexander and No Friends] When Sinclair lifts her head, Alex is looking at her, searching for her eyes. Searching her eyes. Whatever he sees there makes him return that small smile of hers. He squeezes her hand gently.

"Yeah," he says. Then he takes a breath, lowers his chin and gives her a look. Half of the intensity is real: is focus, is Getting Shit Done. The other half is -- a sort of play, almost. Like whatever else, he's sort of glad to be working with her like this.

"Let's do this shit."


And they go in. And they're all business then, because there's Shit To Do. They have a houseguest -- a dreadlocked young man that introduced himself as Fire-Bright, Uktena Galliard. He's chilling on one of the top bunks; blinks, stunned, as Warcry comes through bloody and half naked to barge into the guest bathroom. Alexander's right behind her. He flings his clothes off (also bloody) and goes into the master bath (also barging). The showers turn on almost simultaneously.

Five minutes later, they shut off almost simultaneously. Alex dresses in clothes more or less indistinguishable from what's been dumped in the hamper: t-shirt, board shorts. He scrubs his head dry-ish while Sinclair stalks back and forth in the small living room, cell phone to her ear. The other end, the office of the Chief Combat and Tactics Coordinator, aka the warleader, is an endless ringtone. Brrrrring. Brrrrring. Brrrrrring.

Fire-Bright asks him what's going on in an undertone. "Ran into some weird dog-things," is all Alexander says in return.

Just when Sinclair's fairly sure no one's going to pick up, someone does. The voice on the other end sounds slightly peevish; she recognizes it as one of her fellow fosterns, the Executive Assistant CTCC. It's afterhours, he's probably home watching a game or something. She explains what happened and he sighs heavily and tells her to call the ERC. Evidence Removal Crew, he explains when she asks wtf, and then gives her the number and hangs up before she can repeat it back to him.

The ERC picks up immediately. The voice on the other end is businesslike and crisp. They ask for a location and a general description of the 'problem'. They explain their crews are currently busy, but give her an ETA - thirty-five minutes - and ask her to stand guard until they get there. When Sinclair hangs up, Alex stands, tossing the towel aside.

"We going back or what?"

[Warcry] For what it's worth, Sinclair does know what ERC stands for. She swears when the Exec. Asst. CTCC mentions them, but not because she's confused. He starts to explain. She snaps, "I know!" and hangs up a minute later. She doesn't need to repeat the number back to him. When Fire-Bright is sitting there watching her pace the living room on the phone, hair saturated and soaking the back and shoulders of a baggy Runaways t-shirt, long legs sticking out from red shorts, feet in a pair of old sneakers sans socks, he just doesn't try to talk to her. Avoids eye contact.

Sinclair rolls her eyes at the ERC's office and just says, "I'll be done by then."

Hangs up. Looks over at Alex and gives a nod. "Yeah." She looks at Fire Bright. "We could use the help if you don't mind," she says, trying to nudge the aggravation out of her voice, making it sound like a request wrapped in a simple statement. It doesn't really matter if the Uktena comes with, except that two pairs of Garou hands and a pair of kinfolk hands are going to get things done a lot faster.

Whatever Fire Bright says, though, Sinclair's tying her wet hair up into a ponytail, leaving it in a loop at the nape of her neck, and grabbing her keys, too. "Might as well take both cars," she says. "Get the shit to different dumping grounds faster."

And she's out the door. Now is the time to act, and to act faster than the goddamn sept in this town seems to be able to.

To tell the truth, as she heads down to the El Cam, she's thinking more about their response to a cub on the verge of changing right in their midst, and the first name on the list on her bicep.

[Alexander and No Friends] Fire-Bright's wandered back to his borrowed room by the time Sinclair gets off that second phone call. He's reading Life of Pi, and his eyes are getting big because he's getting to that brutal last section. When Sinclair asks, though, he tosses the book aside and vaults over the edge of the bed, landing on the floor light and easy as a gymnast.

"Sure Rhya," he says. "Lemme grab my cleanup gear."

'Cleanup gear' turns out to be a US Army canteen with a custom cap. When he unscrews it to fill the canteen, Warcry sees that there's a brush fitted to the inside of the cap, like an overgrown nail-polish bottle. The better to scatter water with, one supposes. He screws it back together when the canteen's full and slings it over his shoulder, rangy and slim as he tails the Fostern and the kinsman out of the apartment.

They take two cars. Alex has a tarp in the spare tire compartment, which he pulls out and spreads over the trunk and the folded-down back seats. It might be a fucking hyundai, but he still doesn't want blood in the back. Fire-Bright rides with his elder, explaining offhandedly that he's en route to his home sept in Arizona and stopping over to visit his sister at SDSU, but will stay an extra day or two if she needed some extra help.

"You've been putting me up for free," he says. "I figure I owe you a favor."

Then they're there, and Alex is reaching over to the glove compartment. When he steps out of the car he has a gun in hand, a medium-sized semiautomatic, nothing spectacular but serviceable, dependable. He cocks it, uncocks it, and then slips the safety on and tucks it into his shorts before going around to pop the trunk of his car.

A whistle to catch Sinclair's attention and he's tossing her a Costco-sized roll of black trash bags. Another one goes toward Fire-Bright. He leaves the trunk open but reaches in to turn the light off, then comes over to them. He's wearing closed-toe sneakers now, his feet bare in them.

A walk, a talk, a shower and a drive and he's as good as new. He glances at the half-hidden carnage without revulsion. There's a hint of swagger, of been here, done this in the way he asks them, "You guys want me to keep watch while you hack 'n slash?"

[Warcry] "Who needs the fucking ERC," are the first words out of Sinclair's mouth at the site.


Sure, in the car she makes some politely-interested phrases come out of her mouth for Fire Bright, oh yeah, you have a sister, my cousin's at UCSD, all that. She thanks him for coming along, because he didn't have to. It's a safehouse and a crashpad, she says, and it still means something that he has the honor to help. She still appreciates it. She tells him about that asshole who stayed there awhile ago. She leaves out the part about her slamming him by the throat to the wall. Leaves out the part about her and Alex fighting over it later.

At the lot, though, she's getting out of the El Cam and pointing the hiding spots of the corpses out to the Uktena, glancing over at Alex when she hears the slam of trunk, the cock of the gun that, were she in lupus, would make her ears flick in his direction as well. She catches the bags, snatches them out of the air with a one-handed grab that says something about the strength of her grip. Would have been a good gymnast, but she likes to say she sort of was, almost, kinda, not really. Cheerleading isn't quite the same.

And she says that line about the ERC, throws it out there. Alex asks if they want him to keep watch, and she gives a nod. "Yeah. I'll signal when it's all bagged up." Jerks her head towards Fire Bright. "Get started. I'll be behind you in a second to help you cleanse."

When he heads off towards the bodies, Sinclair looks over at Alex. Just catches his eye for a moment. Smiles at him, something warm in her eyes. Then she turns, heading towards Fire Bright.

It's been awhile since she's needed to help do a cleansing rite. She's glad for the Uktena's help, because frankly, she's not that great at the whole rituals thing. Wants to get better, but she wants to get better at a lot. She's still so young, Fostern, near-Adren or not. It works better with the other Galliard there, and soon enough they know there's no taint of Wyrm anymore, not on Sinclair or Alex, not on the corpses or in the lot.

She glances over her shoulder at him, checks on him keeping watch, being the Face. Slowly she shifts to crinos.

Much faster, she and her auspicemate snap and twist joints apart, tear through muscle, making short, calculated work of dismembering corpses. A human would need a chainsaw. They rend and tear with tooth and claw. Behind him, Alex can hear the wet, heavy thump of body parts being lumped together in those bags, the rustle as those bags are knotted off and double-bagged.

She gives a whistle when they're done, in a human voice. One low, one high. The sort of sharp, clear, quick whistle you give to a dog or a friend to get their attention, to say hey! over here!


Body parts in car trunks.

Werewolves in Southern California. Monsters that surf.


A great deal of time later, give or take, they're back at Casa Vaughn. They split up, drove opposite directions, no more than 1 bag to a dumpster, no more than 1 dumpster in a two-mile radius. It takes awhile. This time, Fire Bright goes with Alex. They get back to the apartment before Sinclair does, and when she does, she checks the parking lot for his Elantra first, before heading up. To go home.

[Alexander and No Friends] That warm smile -- given in the moment the Cliath turns away, in the moment Sinclair and Alex meet each other's eyes -- is returned with a quick wink. Just a little cocky.

It's not overblown, that arrogance; not interfering with his good judgment, thankfully -- though if we're honest Sinclair hasn't really seen that sort of blind arrogance happen all that often since she Came Back -- but it's there. A sort of subdermal, physical assurance that these days is a little closer to true confidence.

They split up. He takes post on a low dirt hill, crouching so he's not too visible. Sinclair heads off to hack'n'slash, as Alex puts it, and he watches the street mostly, alert and on guard. He thinks about the fight, the savage speed of it, the terror, the fact that even terrified, he didn't panic. Give up. In some small way he's proud of that.

In a very big way, he's glad they made it. Both of them. In every sense.


Once in a while he checks to see how Sinclair and Fire-Bright are doing. When it's clear they're wrapping up, he gets Sinclair's keys and pops the big trunk on the El Camino. He helps them carry body-bags, and when everything's stashed away he tosses the surfboards on top and slides the makeshift spear in the side.

They drive around the city making dumps. It takes a long time, but it's weirdly fun. At least, Alex thinks it's weirdly fun. When fear passes and tension blows over, there's a sort of exhilaration. He has to remind himself over and over not to drive too fast, not to draw attention, but his mood is infectious and it turns into a bit of a game, pulling to a stop, popping the trunk, tossing garbage bags full of horrid horrid meat at Fire-Bright, who slam-dunks them into dumpsters all around Mission Bay.

They finish before Sinclair. There's two of them, and the Elantra's smaller; can't carry so much. They stop by a gas station car wash and drive on through. They pass a Wienerschnitzel and it's got chilidogs and chiliburgers 5 for $5, so they stop and pick up ten of each. By the time they get home, they're only a few minutes ahead of Sinclair. When she gets there, she finds his Elantra there, gleaming clean, engine still ticking. She can still smell chilidogs and chiliburgers all the way from the carport to the apartment door, and even more strongly inside.

The bounty's heaped on the tiny kitchen table. Alex and Fire-Bright are working on bagging the surfboards so they didn't drip gore on the kitchen floor before Alex has a chance to bleach them down tomorrow. The Cliath waves at Sinclair as she walks in, points out the food on the table, and then excuses himself to go take a shower. He snags three burgers, two dogs, grabs his large drink, and bids them goodnight. It's a pretty good indication that he has the good sense to retire to the guest room and give Sinclair and Alex privacy in their own den.

For his part, Alex finishes bagging his surfboard and straightens up. "So I know you kinda wanted to cook," he says, "but these were like five for five bucks, and I had such a craving suddenly. I think we should go shower, then pile into bed and nom these and then snooze for like. Ever."

[Warcry] Alexander is, sometimes, so much like rubber. He bounces back from everything fast, and maybe that has something to do with his perpetual motion, his endless energy. And she doesn't tell him this at the lot because she's not sure how he'd take it, but she's proud of him. Proud of the way he grabs whatever the fuck he can to use against his enemy. The first lesson she gave Katherine in fighting, she tried to make the Silver Fang see the dishonorable, ignoble weapons around her. Like the very asphalt at her feet. And if she hadn't been inwardly freaking out that he might get hurt, he might not just get hurt but die so suddenly that she wouldn't be able to help him

-- and she thought about not using her rage to fight, to meet all foes on equal footing. What if she needed to heal him? What if she missed a bite and couldn't

and then one of the hounds turned around

and took him away from her? --

then she might have felt more of that pride in his tactics, in his quick thinking, in his strength, in all of it. The threat of loss was, at the time, too great. And too much to bear.

Coming home, she smells dogs and burgers and truth be told, she's a little disappointed and a little relieved. She's even more tired than she was before, so she's not sure she could have done more in terms of making food than taking something out of the freezer and hitting a few buttons on the microwave. Sinclair opens the door and tells Fire Bright thanks again before he excuses himself, then walks over and wraps her arms quite unceremoniously around Alex's midsection, putting her head on his chest again.

"What is it with you and eating in bed?" she wants to know.

[Alexander and No Friends] An honorable fighter wouldn't fight the way Alex did. They wouldn't grab whatever was at hand. They wouldn't use a goddamn surfboard as a shield and a curtain rod as a spear. They wouldn't entangle the opponent with a surfboard leash; that would be both ludicrous and low.

Then again, an honorable fighter wouldn't fight in a cage, either. They wouldn't train in MMA, which might be correctly called the art of doing whatever the fuck you can to beat the other guy up. They wouldn't ground'n'pound as their primary mode of attack -- they wouldn't entangle, pin, and otherwise take whatever advantage they could in a fight. They certainly wouldn't corner a defenseless babyfaced kid in a park, far away from his big bad Garou lover, and kick the shit out of him in revenge for a fight they started. And they sure as hell wouldn't smirk every time they thought of that little tussle even now, years later. An honorable fighter --

would probably be dead.


Sinclair comes over. Hugs him. They're still messy -- they mildly clean for a while, but then it was hacking and slashing and grabbing and tying and heaving and dumping for something like an hour and a half. He doesn't mind that there's blood and dirt on her hands. She doesn't seem to mind that he smells a bit like a dumpster from the times he and Fire-Bright traded places and he stood on top of the dumpster slam-dunking body parts. She doesn't seem to mind, at all, that her boyfriend is not honorable.

He's tough. He's a survivor. He puts his arms around her and gives her a squeeze, laughing.

"It's like the ultimate indulgence for me. Most days I'm like. Get up. Drink protein shake. Run and work out. Have lunch. Train people. Have dinner. Run. I never just eat and vegetate, y'know? So if I'm not just eating and vegetating but eating where I vegetate, it's a huge deal."

He wraps his arms a little tighter around her, squeezes, lifts her up for a second and sets her back down. Then he swats her on the bum.

"Come on. Shower, eat-vegetate, sleep."

[Warcry] Failsafe tried to teach Sinclair to fight a little more nobly. It was the Gnawers and Walkers on the streets who taught her to use other advantages. Not because she's small or weak, not because she had a chip on her shoulder. The reason she fits so well with the Unbroken and the reason she learned to fight the way she did is that Sinclair has known for a long time that there is no dishonor in doing everything you can to win the fucking war. She doesn't quite believe that the ends justify the means.

But to an extent, that saying comes a little close.

She wraps herself around him, holds him, holds onto him, and there's an exchange in that they might have lost track of in the earlier discussion. Taking care of him doesn't mean she doesn't want him to take care of her back. Wanting to be taken care of doesn't mean she feels weak, feels needy. Not unless he sees it that way. Not unless he rejects her for it.

When she's feeling playful, bouncy, bounding the way he does, Sinclair usually responds to a swat across her rear with a yelp and a laugh, with kissing him and letting him chase her to bed. Tonight he does it after he lifts her up, squeezes her, and... she's just holding onto him. Come on, he said, and she just ignores it. Stands right where she is, longer than she could before, holding him in her arms and listening to his heartbeat.

Which is still steady. Still strong. Still there.

After a little while, she breathes in again, just as last time, and squeezes him back. Draws back. Gives him a sudden, sharp slap on the ass. "Grab the food," she tells him, "and I'll meet you in the shower."

[Alexander and No Friends] Alexander doesn't quite yelp when she slaps him on the ass right back, but he jumps, and then he laughs, and then he leans forward and smooches her on the forehead.

"Kay," he says. He sounds happy. He sounds immeasurably fond.

Then she goes off to the shower. He moves the remaining dogs and burgers -- and there are a lot of them -- into the bedroom. Dumps them onto the bed, puts their sodas on the nightstands, tosses a roll of paper towels on the sheets so they can wipe the chili off their faces. By the time he joins her in the shower, there's already steam everywhere. They have a shower curtain here instead of the frameless sliding glass door Kate has at her place. Kate had a lot of things that Alex doesn't have, but

he doesn't think for a minute that Sinclair would trade one home for the other. The packhouse was the packhouse. This is her den, and after so many months without it, she's finally found her way back again.

That's the thought in his mind, curious and feral, when he strips off his clothes and climbs into the shower with her. She's already washed her hair and brushed her teeth. They squeeze around each other, wet and soap-slippery, occasionally elbowing each other as they maneuver around the narrow tub. They wash the blood and the gunk and the dirt and the night off. It all goes down the drain, leaving only a memory in its wake.

He'd bounced back like a rubber ball. He was even having fun while he and his houseguest were doing the midnight dumpster run. But here, now, the day and the night catches up to him. So much physical exertion. So much to talk about, think about, think through. He was tired when they went to get burritos, and though that dinner conversation wasn't angry, wasn't rough, it was still a lot for them to work through. One more detail in their work-in-progress of a relationship.

And then came battle. The threat of death like a spectre, even if neither of them has said a word about it.

So he's quiet, when the shower's winding down. He wraps his arms around her and they lean against the wall together, eyes closed, drowsing as the water beats down.


When it starts getting cold they get out. They dry off, Alex helping Sinclair towel her hair, then sitting down on the toilet lid for her to do the same. They go to bed wearing towels around their shoulders and nothing else, climbing under the sheets, grabbing chili dogs and chili burgers and pigging out. It's well after midnight when they're too full to eat another bite. Alexander balls up the napkins and the wrappers and stuffs them into the bag, moves the remaining few dogs and burgers onto the nightstand. Drops the trash bag over the side of the bed, brushes the crumbs to the floor.

"Totally getting a Roomba," he says, and reaches to turn out the lights.


In the dark, they shuffle under the sheets, and together. It's so long past his bedtime that Sinclair might expect him to just drop off and sleep in seconds. He doesn't, though. He turns toward her, and he finds her under the sheets. He pulls her close and he says what he couldn't in the light --

That was scary.
and
I'm glad we're okay.

She kisses him, then. She kisses that confession off his lips, and the kiss builds, and he rolls her under him. They kiss as they make love. She holds him in her arms and her legs, holds him so near to her, so close that their lovemaking is slow and tidal, gasping, quiet, rhythmic as the sea outside. He's going to miss that ocean when he moves back to Chicago, he realizes,

and wonders that he's so certain that she'll go back. And he'll come with her. And this doesn't frighten him at all.


Afterward, she holds him, and he sleeps. Eventually she has to roll him off of her, and she does it so gently, so tenderly, that he barely even wakes. Just enough to mumble something incoherent, sky is blue bagels, that she laughs softly to and agrees with. He snuggles her closer, mumbles something else, wholly unintelligible, and slides under again.

She holds him just a little longer. Just long enough to be sure he's safe, and the den is warm and dark, and everything is secure as it should be. The animal part of her relaxes.

She sleeps, too.

[Alexander and No Friends] Alexander doesn't quite yelp when she slaps him on the ass right back, but he jumps, and then he laughs, and then he leans forward and smooches her on the forehead.

"Kay," he says. He sounds happy. He sounds immeasurably fond.

Then she goes off to the shower. He moves the remaining dogs and burgers -- and there are a lot of them -- into the bedroom. Dumps them onto the bed, puts their sodas on the nightstands, tosses a roll of paper towels on the sheets so they can wipe the chili off their faces. By the time he joins her in the shower, there's already steam everywhere. They have a shower curtain here instead of the frameless sliding glass door Kate has at her place. Kate had a lot of things that Alex doesn't have, but

he doesn't think for a minute that Sinclair would trade one home for the other. The packhouse was the packhouse. This is her den, and after so many months without it, she's finally found her way back again.

That's the thought in his mind, curious and feral, when he strips off his clothes and climbs into the shower with her. She's already washed her hair and brushed her teeth. They squeeze around each other, wet and soap-slippery, occasionally elbowing each other as they maneuver around the narrow tub. They wash the blood and the gunk and the dirt and the night off. It all goes down the drain, leaving only a memory in its wake.

He'd bounced back like a rubber ball. He was even having fun while he and his houseguest were doing the midnight dumpster run. But here, now, the day and the night catches up to him. So much physical exertion. So much to talk about, think about, think through. He was tired when they went to get burritos, and though that dinner conversation wasn't angry, wasn't rough, it was still a lot for them to work through. One more detail in their work-in-progress of a relationship.

And then came battle. The threat of death like a spectre, even if neither of them has said a word about it.

So he's quiet, when the shower's winding down. He wraps his arms around her and they lean against the wall together, eyes closed, drowsing as the water beats down.


When it starts getting cold they get out. They dry off, Alex helping Sinclair towel her hair, then sitting down on the toilet lid for her to do the same. They go to bed wearing towels around their shoulders and nothing else, climbing under the sheets, grabbing chili dogs and chili burgers and pigging out. It's well after midnight when they're too full to eat another bite. Alexander balls up the napkins and the wrappers and stuffs them into the bag, moves the remaining few dogs and burgers onto the nightstand. Drops the trash bag over the side of the bed, brushes the crumbs to the floor.

"Totally getting a Roomba," he says, and reaches to turn out the lights.


In the dark, they shuffle under the sheets, and together. It's so long past his bedtime that Sinclair might expect him to just drop off and sleep in seconds. He doesn't, though. He turns toward her, and he finds her under the sheets. He pulls her close and he says what he couldn't in the light --

That was scary.
and
I'm glad we're okay.

And she whispers back, her fingertips touching the curve of his ear, fond and tender,

Me too. Kissing him the first time, then: I was proud of you. I would have been proud for my pack to see the way you fight.

She kisses him again, then. She kisses that confession off his lips, and the kiss builds, and he rolls her under him. They kiss as they make love. She holds him in her arms and her legs, holds him so near to her, so close that their lovemaking is slow and tidal, gasping, quiet, rhythmic as the sea outside. He's going to miss that ocean when he moves back to Chicago, he realizes,

and wonders that he's so certain that she'll go back. And he'll come with her. And this doesn't frighten him at all.


Afterward, she holds him, and he sleeps. Eventually she has to roll him off of her, and she does it so gently, so tenderly, that he barely even wakes. Just enough to mumble something incoherent, sky is blue bagels, that she laughs softly to and agrees with. He snuggles her closer, mumbles something else, wholly unintelligible, and slides under again.

She holds him just a little longer. Just long enough to be sure he's safe, and the den is warm and dark, and everything is secure as it should be. The animal part of her relaxes. One last kiss then, on his temple, and a whispered secret as her own eyes close:

I'm proud you're mine.


*Kai helped write the Sinclair parts of the post! :]