southern california girl with her southern california boy.

[Alexander and Friends] It's icy and cold and dark in Chicago, but half a continent away it was eighty degrees and beautiful in San Diego today. Beach weather. Sinclair woke up to Alexander digging through his -- their -- tiny closet, tossing jackets and hoodies aside to get board shorts and his shorty wetsuit out. He looked over his shoulder when he heard her stirring, his grin a white flash in his tanned face.

Summer! he yelled, even though she's all of six feet away. Eighty degrees! Let's go surfing!


About a week ago he had awoken sort of the same way. Not quite, because Sinclair hadn't been across the room and digging through the closet; she had been on top of him, straddling that hard, carved weapon of brutality -- if not quite war -- that he hones his body into, leaning down over him naked and smiling and so so happy because

did he know what day it was?
(mmmphgh... no?)
it's her birthday.

And then his eyes had snapped open, and he had laughed and slapped his forehead and said shit he forgot, and he was getting up right now to get her a keg and a cake, but she had wrapped her legs around him before he could tumble out of bed and

it had been two hours later that they stumbled out the front door freshly showered and clean and hanging out together, a sleeping back bouncing over his shoulder against his ass, getting a keg of cheap beer from Von's and a cake from costco, a roll of ground beef and a bunch of burger buns and crisp lettuce, juicy tomatoes, piling it all into the back of his car

(because he has a car now in addition to the bike -- because you can't very well be a getaway driver if you can only seat one, can you? plus: surfboards. -- a Hyundai Elantra of all things because, dude, for the price you pay and the stuff you get? come on. no brainer. who cares if it'll fall apart in ten years.)

so they could go down to TJ for some fireworks, and then east, east into the open desert to set 'em off and drink beer and eat cake and have burgers and fuck.

Happy birthday, Sinclair. Happy birthday.


-- only it's not her birthday today. It's just the last day of March, the first day of summer, and his wetsuit landed on the bed at ten in the morning and they were trundling down to the beach by eleven, not even bothering with the car because all they had to do was come down out of that ugly, flat-topped, pink-walled apartment complex and cross the street, go through the alley between the mexican grocery store and the seedy video store, flip over the low seawall onto the sand, and

surf all day and into the evening.


Now it's eight pm, almost nine. And Alex is tired, sore in a worn, happy way. They watched the sun go down balancing on their boards, riding the swells like seagulls on the water. They rode a last few waves in, riding rather than carving because they've been carving all day - young and athletic and vicious, vital creatures that they are. They're packing things up now: dumping melted icewater out of their little cooler, throwing the empty cans of mountain dew into the trash bins, exchanging wetsuit and rashguard for a quick cold shower, shorts, t-shirts. Rolling up the beach towels. Sliding their feet into their flipflops.

Alexander carries the empty cooler and his board. Sinclair carries the towels and her board. They walk hand in hand up the sand to the street, quiet because they're tired and because, well. They live together now. They don't have to talk every moment, make the most of every second together.

The last tracery of blue fades from the western sky. And let's be honest: Alexander's neighborhood isn't exactly the best in the world. After dark it's a little scary; it gets a lot scarier if you take a five minute walk in the wrong direction. Or it would be if they weren't who and what they were, anyway. Sensible humans would go straight home now, lock the doors and close the curtains, but Alexander wants to stop by the little cantina on the corner three blocks down. Burrito bowls and mojitos, he says. Then we'll go home and watch a movie and fool around and sleep.

:] Sometimes when he texts her, he sends her that emoticon. She can almost see it on his face right now.

So that's where they go, skin still a little damp from the beach, surfboards still in tow, but that's okay because they're used to this sort of thing. The neighborhood changes around them, though, and quickly. The apartments don't merely look inexpensive and old; they look cheap and rundown. The filth in the alleys sometimes looks like piss, or blood. A lowrider rumbles by blasting bass-heavy music. Streetlights are few and far between. The cantina's only about a block or two away, not far at all,

but these streets are dark, and the night is getting darker.

[Warcry] On Monday, Sinclair heard her packmates in her head and they were talking about something-or-other, something that mattered back in Chicago, but she didn't care. Oh, how much she didn't care. She was going down to Mexico to get fireworks for her birthday. That's what they did. She woke up before him, a rare rare thing, and jumped on him and wriggled and kissed him and pulled him back when he tried to get out of bed because, as she said,

I'm twenty-three years old and I can do what I want. Apparently what she'd wanted to do was, well. Him. He's heard that phrase often this week, Sinclair justifying that because she is twenty-three, she can do what she wants. This is a magic number, it seems.

He didn't hear it at all, though, that night he laid her out on an unzipped sleeping bag and made love to her, a cookfire dying down nearby, her hands clutching at his back, the air smelling of gunpowder, smoke, their mouths tasting faintly of tequila. She was thinking about the last time she'd come while lying in a desert, and how she was so alone then, and it rained. On her birthday, she's not alone, and when she comes for the first time Alex is down between her legs, her fingers clutching at his scalp, at the sleeping bag, and the sky is clear and dark and overflowing with stars above her.


But after that, of course. It's: I'm twenty-three years old and I can do what I want, she says cheerfully, eating leftover cake for breakfast. I'm twenty-three years old and I can do what I want, she tells him, when she comes tromping back from some sporting goods store with a pair of roller-skates because she wants them. I'm twenty-three years old and I can do what I want, she says, dyeing a lock of her hair a bright, bright blue that fades into purple at the ends. When her hair is down, it mostly hides beneath the top layer, peeks out in a burst of color. When her hair is up, it's a shocking stripe that goes back towards her ponytail holder.


Summer, Alex insists, tossing his wetsuit on the bed, and Sinclair is groggy and yawning, telling him okay, fine. They're doing okay. They've only gotten into a couple of arguments since she came here and moved in with him. Minor things, really. At one point she had a meltdown, started crying, and that epiphany she had on the beach when they met to figure out what went wrong came out: that she's hated herself for a long, long time. That she doesn't quite know what to do about it since she can't exactly go to therapy. And damned if her melting down wasn't rough on him, rough on his patience, rough on his heart. The other fight had something to do with how they handled a guest of the second bedroom who ignored the quiet hours.

They're doing okay. This morning she rolled over and yawned and buried her head under a pillow til Alex flopped onto the bed beside her and insisted she get up, get up! It's summer, it's time to surf!

So, okay. He gets his short wetsuit, and she gets the one she bought when she got here, black and pink and the sleeves covering her tattooed, pierced biceps, the legs covering the viper on her thigh. Her hair up and back, tight and out of her face, giving her big eyes an even more intensely feral look. And with her earrings and her blue streak and all of that --

just another Southern California girl. Surfing with her Southern California boy. All day, and well into the evening.


Sinclair lets her hair down in the shower. It's drying in wet dredlocks now as they walk. Truth be told, she's not as comfortable with these silences as Alex is, living together or not. She gets nervous. She gets, frankly, insecure. Sometimes he can sense her tension and it bleeds over, but he can also sense that she's trying. She's learning. She's twining their hands together as they walk and though she looks at him sometimes, thoughtful and maybe even a little uncertain because -- like a girl who's never had a serious relationship, who just plain does not understand grown men -- she's not sure what he's thinking and that matters somehow...

well. Though there is that undercurrent, it's at an ebb. She's worn out. He's noticed how much easier she is to be around when she's worked out, when she's surfed, when she's gone for a long swim in the ocean, when she's coming back from a run. And after a little while she starts to think maybe instead of worrying about what he's thinking she should look at what she's thinking and ask herself why it matters so much what he's thinking, and her underlying tension drops considerably as she just walks with him, hand in hand. Thoughtful. Comfortable with him because at very least, she can acknowledge that her discomfort is usually just with herself.

And she can work with that. She can work on that.

Mo-ji-toooos, Sinclair echoed, when he mentioned that cantina, and wanting to grab some dinner before going home. She isn't worried about the neighborhood, but her alertness of her surroundings goes up a little. It isn't just because she had her first change in a place not terribly unlike this area. It's because he's with her.

Sinclair yawns, though, squeezing his hand. "It's so weird how you go just a few blocks over and it's like being in a different world," she mentions, but has nothing else to say about it.

[Alexander and Friends] It's not perfect, what they have. By god, it's nothing close to perfect, and she wasn't here very long at all when they had that first fight. He can't even remember why it started anymore -- hell, she was probably just tired from travel and Dealing With Shit and trying to put this fucked up little Sept with its ultrarigid structure, its hierarchy and executive this, assistant that, into some sort of order where they haven't forgotten they're wolves. And kin. And related. And desperate. She was tired, and she was missing her pack, and

it started so innocuously. Something stupid like where to put the toothpaste she bought or something, but the minute things started going a little awry it was so weirdly tense, like she was holding herself back and at a distance suddenly, protecting herself from something he couldn't understand, and he said

why are you acting like you're pulling away?

and then she just crumpled. She was crying, pouring it out, telling him that for so long she hated herself, thought no one could possibly love her, and how even now, even now, she's still so uncertain sometimes. Still has to work at remembering who he is and who she is and that he would never, ever debase himself in such a way as to lie about who and what he is, how he felt. She tells him that, sobbing, and he said oh, baby..., and even then she fought it because

goddammit don't coddle me, i'm not trying to manipulate you into not fighting with me by acting butthurt. i'm not.

and he just held her anyway, shhing her. It's okay. We'll figure it out. I'll remember that you're a work in progress, and you'll remember I'm not just fooling around, and...

it'll be okay.


The second time they fought, it was because someone broke the noise rule and Alex just wanted to throw them the fuck out, but they were douchebags and Sinclair got

physical. And then there was a fight over that: jesus you didn't have to do that and i KNOW that, goddammit, you don't have to TELL me and -- weirdly, strangely, that second fight felt better than the first. Because it wasn't weirdly tense. It wasn't like she was drawing back, so afraid of the end, steeling herself for it. They just ... fought. A release of tension, like a safety valve blowing. And when it was over -- some roughshod compromise drawn, the deal sealed with a fine! FINE! -- Alex paused a second

and began to laugh. Now we should slam the bedroom doors, he quipped. And then maybe I can flounce onto my bed and kri and kri, she retorted.

Later that night, they watched a movie together. And at some point she said i'm sorry i lost my temper earlier. i knew i went too far. i just felt so bad that when you pointed it out to me, i blew up. And at some point he said i'm sorry i rubbed your nose in it. you're 23 years old and you can do what you want ... and i trust you to know right from wrong.

It doesn't really matter who apologized first.


They're not perfect. But they're trying. They try. They're doing a lot better this second time around. So when Alex notices Sinclair getting a little uncertain, looking at him like she's wondering why he's so quiet, this loud, cocky, chiseled, tough little pit bull of a man -- he turns and looks at her. He smiles. She takes his hand. He kisses her cheek, and they walk another block before she's mentioning how fast the surroundings change.

"Yeah," he agrees. "I never quite get that phenomenon. I guess maybe it has to do with city zoning and all. Here's where we'll approve mcmansions. Here's where we'll put a bigass boulevard. Here's where we'll give out liquor licenses. And then it's like a self-sustaining cycle.

"Don't worry," he adds, smiling, "we'll protect each other."

[Alexander and Friends] [Change to! i'm sorry i rubbed your nose in it. you're 23 years old and you can do what you want ... and i trust you. i think i was just kinda ruffled up because it was a garou, and things were getting rough, and... it's my den too, and...

He didn't really say it; didn't really know how: that he was a little scared, and angry because he was scared, and puffed up three sizes bigger to try to make the point that this is his business too, because in the end --

(and he does know how to say this)

i'm still a work in progress to.)

[Warcry] That makes her laugh. Not loudly, and not mockingly. Happily, in a way. Because he doesn't bluster in this way that is so cocky, so smirking, that it borders on self-deprecating: I'll protect you. Because he doesn't simper, he doesn't try to pretend that her flat-out greater strength doesn't unnerve him sometimes and say Well, you'll protect me, won't you? like he's some sort of damsel in distress. Because he says they'll protect each other, which makes her laugh partly because it goes without saying. Partly because she wasn't worried to begin with.

And laugh just because... maybe if she spends less time worrying herself sick over what he's thinking or feeling or if it's what she expects or wants or if it matches up with how she feels or if maybe he's thinking something bad and not telling her,

maybe if she spends less time fixating on what Alex is or isn't,

she can focus on asking herself why she gets nervous in the first place when they're quiet together. Why silence between them should, somehow, make her uneasy. She's been doing that more, since that first fight where she broke down and admitted, tears on her face, that it was just terrifying as hell to be fighting with him at all, what if they broke it again

-- baby we're not going to break, we're not going to break that easily, why are you having such a hard time with this? --

and ever since they got to that resolution, that admittance that her work in progress is a little like building the Pyramids, and she can't exactly go to therapy and ask someone to help her not hate herself anymore. A lot of her work is, in the end, done in silence. Long silences, going through in her mind all the times she's hated herself the most, and what came before those moments, and what -- if anything -- helped.

She holds his hand. She's still there with him, even when she's introspective.

"Can I ask you a question?" she says after awhile, flip-flops slapping her feet and the asphalt gently as they walk.

[Alexander and Friends] It's still warm. The warmth of the day lingers in the concrete, in the asphalt. The wind coming off the ocean is damp and cool, but not yet cold. Through the thin flipflops they wear, they can feel that warmth, like summer radiating back up from the bowels of the earth where it had gone to sleep winter away.

This is a mixed residential/commercial area -- small flat houses sitting on big yards gone mostly to seed; liquor stores, a no-name gas station, and the cantina up ahead. For a moment, passing one of those houses, Sinclair gets a peculiar sensation up the back of her neck. Unpleasant. Before she has a chance to investigate, or even look around, it passes.

She's introspective, anyway. And then she asks him a question, and he looks at her again. No smartass remark here either. Just a quirk of his mouth and a nod, just another socal boy with his socal girl; a miami boy with his kansas girl. "Yeah, sure."

[Warcry] He can see it when it happens. She doesn't... move like a girl. Sometimes, sure, she almost seems human. When she's all giddy and playful, romping with him in bed or when he sees her at a distance, carving her way through the water like it hasn't been something like two years since she's surfed. When she's just chilling, playing video games or watching a movie with him. When she's singing -- and she does sing, often now, along with the radio or just when she's doing dishes or cooking.

Most of the time, though, the fact that Sinclair is an animal is all too evident. When she feels that crawling sensation up her neck she twists her head, writhes a bit, like a dog with an itch on its back that it can't reach because it has no hands. She turns her eyes in one direction, then another, and shakes it off, walking on with him. Asks him what she does.

"How is it out here for you?" she goes on. "I mean... you talked about getting a team together or something. But as long as I've been here, I haven't found many fomori or whatever --"

I haven't found many. Not: I haven't found any. Not: I haven't gotten into a single fight. Not: I haven't even bothered to patrol, it seems so safe! Not: I haven't washed bloody ichor down the drain while you're at the gym.

"-- but just... when I showed up, it sounded like you're kinda... involved. In the so-called 'war effort'. I guess I'm just wondering what you've gone up against, if anything. Or if it's actually pretty quiet."

[Alexander and Friends] "Oh." And here's a rare sight: Alex looking a little abashed, even a little shy. Shy-proud. Something like that. Maybe it's not so rare, anyway, for her: she's see him more deeply, more honestly, than

... well, just about anyone. And she can see him think for a moment, not because he's trying to figure out what to say and what not to say, but just -- how.

"It's really just getting off the ground. When I moved here I guess I just ... got tired of doing the same three things every day. Train, bang on drums, act like a dick. Accomplish nothing that meant anything in the long run. Or maybe I just wanted to take my mind off of, y'know, everything. Us, Chicago, everything. So I put up an ad on GW.net offering to give some basic self-defense lessons. Y'know, stomp instep, poke eyes. But then two of my 'pupils' were pretty awesome and stayed on to help out. And then a third guy called me up and said he didn't need training, but he thought maybe he could help out too, and ... one night we're sitting around drinking beers and we were just like, we should do something.

"So that's how it started. It's just the four of us right now, for the most part. You saw 'em the other day for about two seconds - Ethan, Jen and Rob - they were walking out when you 'popped' into the bathroom.

"We haven't done anything grand and heroic or anything. They don't really give us big jobs, and frankly I'm not stupid enough to go hunt, nor important enough to get any reliable tips straight from the Sept's scouts. Once in a while the warmaster's like, escort these Garou here, drop them off there, sit in the car and be the getaway driver. Usually two of us, sometimes three or four. Sometimes just the one, but we try to work in pairs at least so we can keep an eye on each other. I think Rob got called on to be a temp in some company the Sept was keeping tabs on, but it turned out to be nothing and he quit." Alex laughs a little.

They're getting close. He slows down a bit; this isn't exactly dinner conversation. "One time," he says, "I was the driver to some target the Sept was hitting and the Garou had just gone in when WHAM, this fucked up mutant thing landed on the hood. I did this whole Hollywood screech around in a tight circle thing, threw him off the hood, and then Ethan shot him in the head. And I ran him over. That was probably the most action I saw. So ... I guess it's been pretty quiet. This part of town, anyway. Jen's more hooked into Sept politics, since her brother's here, and she says there's a lot more action over in the more ghetto parts of south and southeast county. Like, Chula Vista, Imperial Beach, National City. Apparently recently there's been something about fomori drug rings smuggling 'special' crack across the border, too."

Only after all that does he ask, an afterthought: "Why?"

[Warcry] She does remember seeing Jen, Ethan, and Rob on their way out one night. Ethan's eyebrows flicked when he saw her, and he'd glanced at Alex for a second before walking out. Rob was the more polite, quiet one. Jen was the one with the upwards nod, the hey as they were saying their later, mans to Alex. And he'd told her their names, friends and students and whatever of his, but they'd gotten distracted because, well

Sinclair said he smelled like he'd been working out when she hugged him, and he could tell right away what that did to her. The way she inhaled his scent. The way she started to touch him, how she's learned that maybe she doesn't need to just press against him and put her hand right on his cock to communicate her desire. She stayed close, though, kissed his throat softly, murmured in his ear that he smelled so fucking strong.


He tells her now more about them, though. How they ended up hanging out, talking, starting to work. She's attentive. He says the warmaster, who she knows as Shelter of Steel-rhya, and she thinks of talking to Lukas sometime about how the San Diego sept does it, if maybe in Chicago there are small groups of kin who can be trusted for specific jobs, but mostly she's just listening to Alex talk.

A muscle moves in her jaw, tense for am oment, when he tells her about the mutant thing on the hood that Ethan put a bullet in. She nods regardling the 'special' crack. "I've heard about that," she mentions. She would have. A Fostern Galliard, back in town again after a long absence, packed with wolves not of this sept... they don't get her too involved. But then they saw her fight. She brought trophies stripped down to bone and dropped them in front of Shelter of Steel, right on his desk, their blood still staining her jaw, her throat, her chest.

He's given Garou her number a couple of times now. Extra firepower, he says. Never an extra pair of eyes, never anything like that. She's no scout. But he looked into her records. He knows what she's capable of, now, and she's twice as useful as she is dangerous.

Sinclair shrugs a little, half-smiling. "I just wondered. The only time I really know of you fighting, you came home bloody and it took me like two weeks to stop freaking out over it."

To stop wanting to follow you everywhere. To stop thinking maybe it would be best if I just kept you really close. All the time. So you wouldn't get hurt again.

[Alexander and Friends] They're still lugging their boards around, and their beach towels and cooler and their flipflops are flipping and flopping on the sidewalk. Alexander extricates his hand from Sinclair's, though, and wraps his arm around her shoulders instead. And even like this -- smelling faintly of saltwater, more strongly of unfiltered tap water from the quick blast of a shower -- even like this he smells strong. Fit and hale and strong. They both are: such young athletic savages, fearless in their strength.

Some part of her, deep and instinctive, knows that he'll sire strong cubs. They aren't thinking about that now, not consciously. Maybe someday they'll say to hell with it, let's do it, and she'll get some eggs extracted and he'll go into a bathroom with a little plastic cup and 9 months later some nice wide-hipped surrogate mom will give them a baby, which they'll take to Sinclair's folks in Kansas so they can raise him, or her. Tell him, or her, that it's not that your mommy and daddy don't love you; it's that they love you but they're in a war, and your mommy's very tough and scary, and they don't want you to be hurt and scared. And that kid, or those children, will grow up strong and tough and fast and savage, too, laughing and savage; will be closer to their grandparents than their parents, but even so

when they visit, something in Sinclair will recognize them. They're hers. They smell like her, and like her mate, and

in the exact same way, that part of her recognizes him now. Recognizes his potential, his fitness, that strength in him that's there not because he's got a bit of a chip on his shoulder still, not because he can probably beat any human up, not because he's Taking Responsibility and Leading Others and Doing Good, not even because he works out religiously until he's carved out of steel -- but because he has the will to do all these things, and always did.


"I get it," he's saying now. "When you left that night to fight or clean up or whatever, I was freaking out too. I kinda hated that I was freaking out, because man, it's bad enough sometimes just thinking about my brother, but ... "

He smooches her temple, smiling. Not quite humor. More like fondness.

"I guess at the end of the day my philosophy's this. We can freak out about it all we want and it won't do any good. If anything we'll just distract each other, because we'll know that somewhere out there, our S.O. is freaking out. Or worse, we'll spend all our time being paranoid and watching each other and trying to protect each other until we kind of lose track of who we are, what we've got.

"So maybe the better thing to do is just to accept it. Accept that, yeah, sometimes we get in situations that are scary. And dangerous. And maybe deadly. But we're not idiots. We'll be careful, as much as we can. We'll do our part, and ... yeah. We accept that this is part of our lives, but not everything. And we move past it and just, y'know. Live."

They're at the cantina -- voices spilling out into the night air, a raucous young crowd rubbing elbows with a few hardbitten oldtimers.

"Let's grab some burrito bowls and sit out on the back porch," Alex suggests. "We can talk some more out there."

[Warcry] She huffs a laugh when he hugs around her shoulders, smiles. It feels nice, walking with him like this. It feels good, being with him again. But what they're talking about is serious, and she's a little quiet as they discuss it. Not sad, not tense, just thoughtful.

Her eyebrows flick as he talks of them distracting each other, the two of them freaking out and the other knowing it's happening as they're laying their life on the line. It's the truth, and she doesn't dispute it, but some of it is... well. A little obvious. At least to her. She's the one, really, who has to think about this -- if him being in her life gets in the way of how she reacts in the midst of battle. If thinking about him, if him being potentially at risk or potentially left behind, could get her or her allies killed.

Alex puts it all in terms of each other, though, equal, and ...Sinclair is quiet because she's not entirely sure that's the cold, hard, brutal truth of the matter. Her arm is around his waist. She squeezes him once, wordless.

"Okay," she says, and kisses the side of his pectoral, which is just where her mouth falls when she turns her head towards him. Draws aside again to walk more comfortably, linking their hands once more.


The back porch isn't empty, not on a warm night like tonight, but by the time they've sat down and settled themselves, their boards, a couple of peope have already left. Sinclair lets her flipflops fall off her feet to the ground and puts her toes on Alex's chair beside his leg, knees bent under the table, as she digs into her burrito bowl. Chicken. She didn't get a mojito but a margarita, on the rocks, and the thing is more tequila than it is sour mix, which is a nice change of pace from most places.

"I guess that last year when you got hurt," she says, picking up the thread of conversation as they start to eat, "what freaked me out at first was all the what-ifs, like what you talked about. And I got angry. But to tell the truth, I got over a lot of that as soon as I knew the immediate threat was over. When I say it took me two weeks to stop spazzing over it, I mean that ...I really had no idea how hurt you were, or weren't." She pauses, mixing her rice with some salsa. Her eyes flick up to him. "I don't even mean physically, y'know? I didn't know how scared you were, or if you were feeling... vulnerable or whatever. I had no clue how I should be caring for you then, and ...yeah. I was walking on eggshells."

[Alexander and Friends] They've both got burrito bowls. She got the chicken; he got the steak-n-chicken combo bowl, and there's mexican rice and guac and salsa and sour cream, there's crisp lettuce chopped up and mixed in and it's all nice and hot-cool at once, and

even though the discussion is serious, he's just so happy. He has his foot on her chair too -- just one foot to the side of her hip, her feet on the other side of his. And he's reclining in his seat, almost, slouched down comfortable and lazy in the wicker seats out on the patio. They can hear the surf booming in the distance, beneath the steady hum of conversation. Clink of glasses, silverware, dishes. Feet, laughter. Little fires burning up in the floor-standing heaters, shedding warmth on them as the pacific night grows steadily cooler.

"Do you know now?" It's not a test; it's genuine curiosity. "How to be caring for me if I come back hurt again, I mean. Cause, y'know. I could just tell you."

And he stretches his bowl across the table without comment. She knows what he means: want some steak?

[Warcry] It amuses her a little, that he wants to offer her some of his food. She thinks about telling him, baby, if I'd wanted steak I would have ordered a combo bowl, too, and a year or so ago she might have just quirked a brow and asked, seriously? and frankly, a couple of these go through her mind before she realizes that it's not such a fucking big deal and she doesn't need to either condescend to him nor analyze him in order to just shake her head and say,

"No thanks," before delving back into the conversation, mixing her cheese and guac and so forth up with her meat and salsa and beeeaaans. She shrugs a little at him, thoughtful. Her bare foot rubs against his leg, familiar. "Not...really? I guess kinda," Sinclair goes on. "But yeah," she adds, with a little laugh. "Maybe you should just tell me.

[Alexander and Friends] Her little laugh gets a grin out of him. They're both sort of reclining in these wicker easy chairs with their burrito bowls in their hands, and the murmur of conversation -- a little distant because Sinclair's there and no one else is really all that close -- drifts around them, warm as the night. He reaches down to put his hand on her foot, on her ankle, rubbing up and down her calf for a minute before picking up his spoon again.

"Well," he says between bites, noms, chewing as he thinks, "I guess the biggest thing is: don't baby me. I mean, I know you probably wouldn't anyway, but A, I kinda prizefight for a living. So I'm pretty used to coming home banged up, getting back up the next day 6am, and going right back to it. A bit of pain and injury isn't that big a deal.

"But B, prizefighting isn't the same thing as fighting for your life. I mean yeah people get seriously injured and sometimes even killed in the ring, but that's rare, and even if you get a really nasty opponent they generally don't mean to kill you. So even though I'm used to getting banged up, it still rattles me when it's like, because I was trying not to get gakked. And when I'm injured and rattled, I'm ... sorta like a hurt, feral dog. The last thing I want is to feel weaker than I already am. And if you make me feel like that, I'll probably get my back up and bite.

"So. Be nice to me? But don't like... drop everything and rush to me to stand guard or seek-destroy-kill-protect or wait on me hand and foot or anything like that. Don't act like I'm totally incapacitated or fragile or can't even take care of myself anymore. I'll probably be feeling vulnerable already, even though there's no way I'll admit it at the time. I don't wanna feel weak, too, you know?

"And ... it's okay to ask me if I want you to do anything about it, if you're feeling like you don't know what to do. And if I really feel like I need it, I might ask you to break one of your gourds over me. Or I might just ask you to make me some ramen. Or I might just say 'nothing, I'm cool'."

A small pause.

"I might also, if I had a really tough time and just feel drained, ask you to please get me a little space for a while. In that case, please understand it doesn't mean get out of my life. Or even get out of the apartment. It doesn't mean sit on the other side and stand guard either. It just means... give me a little space. Let me curl up in my hole and lick my wounds for a while, and I'll be all right."

His hand drops to her shin again, squeezing gently, affectionately.

"Okay?"

[Warcry] As soon as they sat down there were people leaving. If they stay here long enough no one will come out on the patio. She's changed the whole vibe of the place. Alex looks like the only one who is having a nice, relaxing warm summer evening -- the only one in the place who could possibly have such a thing when she's within twenty feet. He can only have it because he has some kind of trust in her. Knows that if he ran, she wouldn't chase him. If he said no she wouldn't demand a yes because if he doesn't give her what she wants she'll rip his fucking throat out. But the knowledge that if she chased him she would overtake him, if she wanted to take what she wants she could, if she wanted to hurt him nothing could stop her --

it's a hard thing to live with. It's a hard thing to do, to have those gendered tables turned so drastically, so completely. By every law that matters to them he doesn't have to consent to being with her, he doesn't have to want any of this, and the only reason any of this is okay or works at all is that Alex chooses to believe her when she says she would never willingly hurt him. She would never make the decision to confine him. He has to trust her. He has to believe that for Sinclair, nothing he gives her is worth a damn if it isn't given with utter, complete freedom.

Every day, he works on believing that she really has laid down all her strength and all her power at his feet, surrendered every right the Nation gives her, and that what's left is just this girl who loves him, and loves him deeply, because he makes her happy. Makes her feel like she's not alone, makes her feel safe, makes her feel like a normal girl, fills her with ardor and excitement and helps her not be a neurotic wreck, and essentially does and is all the things that some regular human boyfriend could do and be.

Every day, Sinclair works on believing that Alex has chosen her. Not because he had to, or worse -- and more dreadful -- because he pitied her. Because he likes who she is. Because she makes him happy, and makes him feel like who he already is is just fine, it's enough, and it doesn't matter if he's not perfect or not a nicer guy and he doesn't have to be anything more than himself. Because she can be so goddamn sweet and playful and ridiculous. Because she's fucking smart enough to keep up with him, Harvard degree or not. Because she's kind of a badass. Because home feels more like home when she's in it.

They practice their faith rigorously. Everyone else, tensing up because there's something in the dark that wants to eat them, can go hang.

His hand falls to her tattooed ankle and she smiles, wiggling her foot in response. He can feel the sleek, firm muscle in her calf when he runs his hand up her leg a bit. She flexes it for a moment, pointing her toes -- they happen to be purple -- and then relaxing again.

They eat. Alex talks. Sinclair listens, her eyes mostly on him, occasionally on her food. She can find her margarita blind, though, and sips it without looking where she's reaching. She looks as attentive as though she's in class somewhere, taking mental notes. Remembering. She listens, without reacting much or frowning or looking worried or nodding, until he compares the way he feels after a run-in with something seriously and actively lethal to being a wounded wild dog.

That sinks in very easily, more quickly than any metaphor. Because Sinclair's smart. Because a lot of Sinclair is so very human, so very normal. She was singing Cee-Lo Green this morning while she made some eggs, dancing around the kitchen in her underwear and a tank top because nobody else was up and around and she probably wouldn't care anyway. But when he describes that feeling as something as bestial as that, she understands immediately what he means. Even if the Walkers in this city hadn't treated her the way they had when she first changed, she'd understand.

To the rest, she listens. She's worried that if he won't let her help him, then she won't know what to do. And that's about when he gets to the part of telling her what to do. A part of her, to be honest, resists it. A big part. It's against her very nature to not do what she can to help him. And what he's asking her to do would make sense to her

if he were Garou. But when she thinks that, she looks at her bowl, a little ashamed. He touches her, and her eyes lift again. "I wouldn't baby you," she says, after a moment. "It's not like you get hurt and suddenly I see you as fragile or something. It's just... honestly I'm not so scared of breaking you as just not giving you something you might want or need because you're doing everything you can to act like everything's fine." She pauses. "I know sometimes it won't be an act, and you really are totally fine, but... honestly, you're a prizefighter. You bluster as part of making your living."

Sinclair cracks her neck, rolls it, and shrugs. "I guess I just hope that over time maybe you won't feel the need to put on a show about it with me." She half-smiles. "And I'll do what I can to not go nuclear, but give me some slack, too. Because I don't think there's ever going to be a time when my first instinct is to find whatever hurt you and remove it. And sometimes, if it's an enemy, I'm going to have to do that whether it makes you feel weak or not."

There's no apology in that. Maybe some regret, that her duty could have fallout like that. But at least it's honest. At least she's not shutting down and just simpering okay. "But I can ask you if there's something I can do. And I can be okay with it if there's... really not much I can do other than let you deal with it in your own way. I can do that, if you can handle the fact that sometimes I might have to heal you, seek-destroy-kill-protect, and ...maybe remind yourself that it's not because I think you're weak, it's because it's just what I am."

[Alexander and Friends] "Aw, baby." And that's not patronization. That's something soft, softer than anyone else ever really sees him -- softer than she usually sees him, too. His hand is still on her skin, his thumb stroking her lean calf like that will help him get his point across somehow. And maybe it does. Maybe that point of contact, that touch of his skin to hers, says more than he can with words -- says i'm here, we're in touch, we're connected.

"I wouldn't ask you not to go Kill Wyrm. Ever. I'm not even saying don't react to it immediately. I'm just saying -- I guess I'm just saying don't make me feel like it's so rigidly connected to me being hurt, you know? Like, you got hurt! You couldn't handle it yourself and got HURT! So I must run out and kill it FOR you, now, now, NOW, rar! Does that... make sense, the difference between that and 'oh hey, you found a Wyrm. Is it dead? No? Hm, guess I better tear it to shreds'? One makes me feel more like your partner and ally. Maybe ... a weaker ally, but an ally anyway. The other just makes me feel like a victim, helpless without my big strong protector. And I really can't stand to feel like that."

And there's a bit of a pause. For all his usual bluster, he's quiet now, thoughtful, a little raw from these truths he's divulging. These truths that really, in a sense, require him to look at himself objectively and unmercifully and say,

yeah. i'm insecure, and all my bluster and aggression and kneejerk overreaction stems from that.

And maybe that's why, after a moment, he adds quietly -- "Believe me, I know how far I'm asking you to bend over backwards to accommodate me and my fragile little ego. I know it's not easy for you. I know you're already trying really hard. I know what you've already given me is way more than most people like me ... you know, kin, ever get from Garou. But I guess the thing is I don't really think of us as Garou and Kin, you know? I don't think of us as just humans or something either, but ... part of what I love about you, and us, is that we don't really live like the Way Things Are In The Nation dictates our every thought and action. That I can trust you not to want to live that way.

"And for what it's worth, I'm trying too. I'm trying to remember I can trust you, and to let down some of that bluster, and not flip out every time I feel even the slightest inkling of being weak, or a victim, or ... less than you, or something. I'm trying to recognize that -- yeah. You are stronger than I am. You're a werewolf, and I'm not. But 99.9% of the time that I feel like Just Your Kin, it's in my head, not yours."

[Warcry] The fact that Alex is rarely soft with her -- that he's not soft at all really -- is a part of why Sinclair chose him, felt in her gut so early on that this was right. He was never going to think that letting her be normal and feminine and sexual and playful meant that she was weak. He was never going to let tenderness get in the way of his own strength, either.

The truth is that sometimes, Sinclair will go over the Wyrm and it won't just be duty. It won't be sane. It won't be To Fulfill the Litany. It will be because something laid a hand on him. Something threatened her kin, her mate, and that something needs to be eliminated from the universe because otherwise her rage will go blind with bloodlust, turn everything red and black until the only thing that's left is her, and her mate. She knows that about herself. It's in the depeest pits of what they call rage, that knowledge of how thin the thread is holding her to humanity, to sanity, to will.

He just doesn't want to feel like it's about her killing something because he couldn't. Because he failed. Because she needs to bring back a head and say there baby, I protected you.

Her head tips to the side as he's talking. Sinclair can, when called upon to do so or when she chooses to, be a profoundly good listener. She lets it all unspool from him, as he confesses that yeah, he can't stand feeling victimized even if he can't avoid the truth that he's weaker than she is. As he admits that he's asking her to do a lot to tiptoe around his sense of self, though that makes her blink, makes her eyes flicker with something she doesn't instantly express. She just goes on listening. Her brow furrows a little when he talks about what she's given him, how it's more than most Garou give Kin, but that smooths a bit a moment later.

Sinclair lifts her foot a bit and rubs it against his side, through his thin cotton shirt. It's somehow more tender, more intimate. It's what her hand would do if she could reach him. She isn't the type to reach across the table and hold his hand, I know baby. I'm here.

"I guess... I don't view you as an ally or a victim," Sinclair says quietly, after a little while. "You're just... Alex. And you're mine. I wouldn't want to go tromping off to kill something for you. I'm not gonna lie, baby, I can't sit here and tell you that I'm not going to fly the fuck off the handle and go rar, but it's not... the idea of you not being able to handle it doesn't enter into it." She pauses a moment, and speaks quietly. "Baby, the first time I frenzied since my Change, it was because some... Frankensteinian monster-thing threw open this steel door and sent my Alpha flying.

"My Alpha's an Ahroun," she says, still quiet. Not so many people on the patio now, still, but she's quiet about it. "He's as fast as I am and a lot stronger. He wasn't even really hurt. I just remember that thing knocked him aside and I lost it. And I think if my cousin had gotten hurt and I hadn't had a cross-country drive to calm down on, I would have lost it as soon as I found someone I could hold accountable. "

Sinclair takes a breath. "I'm not going to be 'oh hey, guess I better kill it'. But I'm not going to be rushing off to kill something because I want you to be my damsel in distress and I'm the white knight. I guess I just... see you like I see anyone who matters to me, whether they're stronger than me or weaker than me or whatever. The reason I get rar has nothing to do with who it is or how badly they're hurt and everything to do with the fact that they matter to me." She hesitates before using this word, but then decides to be truthful about it: "They're mine, and I lose my damn mind when they're hurt or humiliated."

A shrug flexes her shoulders. "And to be pretty blunt, you bend over backwards and walk on eggshells to accomodate me and my temper and my insecurity and all my own bullshit, too, so I really don't think you're asking all that much for me to just not treat you like you're my fragile widdle pumpkinwumpkin wif a boo-boo cuz dat mean ol' Wyrm ting ruffed him up." She smiles.

[Alexander and Friends] Alex's lips quirk in a quick irrepressible grin when Sinclair talks about Frankensteins and flying alphas. It's not funny, not really -- she's telling him about the first time she frenzied since her Change -- but for an instant the image sticks, makes him laugh. If he were a cartoonist he'd draw it for her. Panel 1: frankenstein. Panel 2: slam. Panel 3: eeee! Panel 4: O_O. Panel 5: RAR.

Then he's quiet again, listening, pausing to munch his burrito bowl before it gets cold on occasion -- but listening, mostly. And he seems to get it better when she explains it like that. It's not that he's her kin. It's that he's hers, period, the same way her pack is hers, and her cousin, and everyone else she knows and loves -- as achingly small as that circle can be, sometimes.

By the end, Alex is grinning again. Bursting out laughing when she baby-talks, loudly enough that skittish patrons on the other side of the patio look over. His hand drops back to her leg, slaps gently at her calf as he laughs.

"Okay," he says. "I can handle that. You getting mad because something you care about got hurt. Rather than, you're gonna flip because you're the big bad wolf and I'm the fragile widdle pumpkinwumpkin. I mean, I can't promise I won't get my hackles up if and when it happens, but... at least right now, I understand you. And, y'know, I'll try to remember that on my dash to the diving board into the deep end."

[Warcry] When she changed, Sinclair took herself away from her family for years. She had no pack until she met Joey and Dietrich and got drunk off her ass. She didn't ever stay on one couch for long. It was as though she knew. It was as though she had some kind of clue how little control she would have if she was close to them, if something happened to anyone she got close to, how horrified they would be if they saw her like that.

Truth be told, Alex is one of the reasons she went home to see her parents again, spent that time with them last summer, went back for the holidays, calls and emails and has them as Facebook friends now. He could handle her. Maybe not frenzied, but... he could stand to be around her, near her, and was even happy with her. So maybe that meant that if her parents were at least as tough as he is -- and in a way, they're far tougher -- then they'd be okay.

And they wouldn't turn around and cast her out because she was a monster.

The conversation has never been terribly dark. Sinclair is, of the two, the more serious. Maybe it's because she's a Fostern now, and inching closer every day to Adren. She's a Galliard, with a long memory and an understanding of the past that few attain or strive for. She's so much younger than him, and yet there's an age to her that wasn't there when he first met her in the Brotherhood of Thieves. A maturity that's come on so very fast, because of the War and the Nation.

He helps her not be so fucking serious though, ironically. She yelps when he spanks her calf and gentle-kicks his hip, laughing with him. "Well, Jesus, Alex, it's not like you getting your hackles up over something is news at eleven," she teases. "You aren't exactly a zen monk over here."

[Alexander and Friends] "I don't know what you're talking about," he says, not even bothering with the straight face. "I'm totally zen here. Letting the ephemerality and beauty of the day flow right through me like water, leaving my hands wet but empty. And all that shit."

He picks up his mojito, toasts her with it across their little table. A sip; then he puts it down. "You sure you don't want a chunk of steak? It's pretty awesome, all smoky-grilled and stuff." And he offers his bowl across the table again, and as she's either picking some steak out or shaking her head no he adds,

"Hey. I'm kinda glad we talked about this. 'Cause like. It's important, and I think it's good that we could talk about it chillinatedly instead of yelling about it someday after I come home with a gash or something."

[Warcry] That cocky, shit-eating grin of his when he's saying he doesn't know what she's talking about. He's totally zen. That self-confidence that isn't, and has never been, entirely bluster. Truth be told it turns her on a little. Maybe the tequila in that margarita she's downing has something to do with it, blood flowing towards the surface or whatever, but it's also just him. Being a dick who isn't entirely a dick. Being Alex, basically.

She rolls her eyes. "You are not gonna let up til I have some steak, are you?" she retorts, plucking a piece out and popping it in her mouth. "Oh my god! That is the best piece of meat I have ever had in my mouth!" she over-effuses, eyes looking wide and bright blue at him. She doesn't even pretend that much innocence.

Then she's smiling. Happily, really, and relaxed. "Chillinatedly," she echoes, laughing.

[Alexander and Friends] For his part, Alex doesn't pretend any innocence at all. He smirks, "Second-best."

And then they're relaxing into a sort of smiling seriousness. She echoes him. He echoes her, echoing him: "Yeah. Chillinatedly."

The conversation moves on from there. They eat their burrito bowls, the rice and lettuce and beans and steak'n'chicken, the guac and the salsa and the sour cream on top. He talks about that one wave they caught together, the one where it was the fabled ninth wave or something, the biggest one of the pack, even though that far out at sea you can't even really tell until you've already committed to it, until they'd already started riding it in and as the bottom came up under the water they rose up on their boards in the same instant, synchronized without a thought, and carving down the face of the wave side by side he yelled oh yeah, this one's a big one and she just whooped, and

yeah, that was an awesome ride.

And they talk about how they both hate putting a soaked wetsuit back on because for one thing it takes forever and it's all stuck and stretchy, and for another it's all clammy and cold. They talk about how they both do this thing where they ride waves all morning until they're tired, and then they come ashore and peel out of the suits and shower and sit down for lunch, thinking they're just gonna lounge around and work on their tan for the rest of their day, leave mid-afternoon, but then right around four, five pm the tide starts coming in again and those waves get bigger and bigger and even though every single time they swear they're done, they're not putting those clammy suits back on,

they always put 'em back on and paddle out to catch those huge sunset waves. Juuuust like they did today.

Yeah, that was an awesome day.

Toward the end of dinner they talk about other things. He talks about how they should get a roomba. She wonders if Tripoli would make friends with it. He says he's going to make Tripoli a pair of pila out of forks. He's still trying to figure out how to make a gladius, though, to complete the little gaffling's roman legionary's gear.

They talk a little bit about visiting her parents sometime. Maybe when spring settles in a little more and it's not so cold in the midwest. Maybe May, maybe early summer.

Eventually the waitress comes by and drops their tab off. They pay, calculate tip, add it, and down the last of their drinks. Pleasantly buzzed, rather stuffed, they trundle off the back of the porch, and it's starting to get a little colder so they hug together as much for warmth as for closeness, and inebriation, as they start walking home.

Since they came off the back of the cantina anyway, they take the back street home. It's a little quieter than the main boulevard. They'll miss stopping by the mailboxes on the way in, but Alex muses that they can just go check the mail tomorrow, it's not that big a deal.

[Warcry] She huffs a laugh at that second best. A hint of color in her cheeks, and it's not embarrassment as much as it is a bit of liquor, and Alex reminding her of his cock. She grins when he accuses her of blushing, and her color goes up. And he laughs, and then they're both laughing, and then they're talking about the waves and wetsuits and one day they'll learn not to bother taking the suits off to begin with, or they'll get really smart and just buy a second wetsuit which he says defeats the whole purpose

the purpose of what? she laughs at him, and he archly says something about if she doesn't know he's not going to tell her

but they both know. That the complaining about the soaked wetsuits is as much a part of what today was as the waves themselves, that peeling out of those suits and showering off and eating and having a beer up on the beach after Sinclair's changed into one of those bikinis she has -- by god, she has a lot of swimsuits, and she left some back in Chicago -- and insists that she's not going back in the water til she's as dark as Alex.

"Tripoli would ride the roomba like a chariot," she informs him dryly. She tells him about Tripoli's eee-ing and how sometimes it makes her sad that she can't really talk to him. She's better at inferring what he's saying than anyone, but a Theurge could actually talk to him, y'know? Just the other night he was trying to tell her something, was very agitated, and she just couldn't figure it out. "I should teach him to draw," she says. "Or get like... picture cards or something he can roll over and point to, like an ape."

They talk about going to the zoo sometime. They talk about going to Kansas, and she says they should go while it's still storm season, he should see some of the thunderstorms. And she could commune with her totem. Which is probably the first time she's ever talked about Perun, described him for Alex, tried to explain what it feels like -- not the bond to a totem and pack, really. But the storm itself, imbued with the force of something almost godlike.

By the time they pay and leave, the patio is empty of other patorns, the inside hopping with activity. Sinclair, without shifting, has a lower alcohol tolerance than Alex by a bit. She's not a heavy drinker, and she had a couple of those epically strong margaritas. She's mellowed out, she's nuzzling him openly as they walk away, her lips brushing his throat and then pressing to the thin skin there,

as she exhales a sigh on him, asking,

"Does the back way get us home faster?"

[Alexander and Friends] "You know," he mentions back on the patio, back while they were still lounging over the remnants of dinner, sipping their second or third drinks, "my brother used to say that too. He's really into all that ... digital stuff, internet stuff, and he runs into spirits of the web a lot. He was all sad he couldn't actually understand them, and finally one day he asked a Theurge to teach him to speak Spirit-ese. But then afterward he says even though, yeah, when they transcribe out the terms of a deal or whatever for the records they make it sound like an actual conversation with grammar and semantics and logic and flow, the actual ... 'speaking' part really isn't. It's still just very intuitive, very much more understanding and conveying than actual listening-speaking.

"I guess in that sense, it's a little like how you guys 'speak' when you're in wolf form. I wouldn't really know, though. But maybe you don't actually need to learn 'spiritese' to talk to Tripoli. Maybe as you get to know him better and better, and he gets bigger and stronger, you guys will kind of just develop a communication of your own. I mean, my brother and I -- at least when we were kids -- sometimes it was like we just knew what the other was thinking without having to say much."

-- which might be the first time he's really talked about his brother at any length; might be one of the few times he's actually explicitly acknowledged some piece of life, of their existence, that is strictly and solely hers. Could never be his. And vice versa.

Which is a little bit sad, but he brightens as she talks about going to the zoo. And he expresses interest at Kansas thunderstorms, though of course he can't resist quipping about tornados and wearing red shoes.

On the way back they walk a little slower, wrapped around each other and a little bit drunkfaced; Sinclair a bit more than Alex. Once or twice she lets her board drag on the ground, and eventually he stops her and she watches, amused-bemused, as he lashes the two boards together antiparallel to one another, face to face, and then hands her one leash, takes the other himself. They walk with the boards slung over their backs from there on, balanced in makeshift slings of the surfboard's own leashes, bouncing gently against their backs as they go.

"Nope," he says. "In fact I'm pretty sure it gets us home slower. But that's okay 'cause I like walking with you."

A few moment's pause; then, "I like you, Sinclair. I don't just mean I-love-you, 'cause I do, but. I like you too, you know? There's a diff."

Up ahead's that empty lot again. They're passing by the back side this time, but it looks just as overgrown and rundown, just as gone-to-seed, if not worse. Maybe Sinclair remembers how she felt, passing it the first time. Maybe it's just muscle memory, instinctive recall, that makes her feel just the faintest hint of tension again. Alex doesn't seem to notice anything, though. His free arm is still heavy and warm over her shoulders, his torso compact and hot against hers.

[Warcry] Once, they talked about wounds. Bruises. About the day he found out that no, Gaia fucked it up, and he and his brother weren't going to be the same. In Sinclair's memory, they were entwined at the time. She remembers empathizing, only child that she is, at least with the idea that you can be hurt by something for a very long time, never quite healed from it, even if it doesn't break you. Incapacitate you.

To the discussion of Tripoli, she shrugs a little, and doesn't say much. And usually that's a shutdown -- he's said the wrong thing, and it might make tension ripple through him to see her doing it again -- but she brings it up again a little while later. Says that communicating with Tripoli isn't the problem, that she doesn't know about the spirits Aaron's talking about, she was just saying she wishes she could talk to Tripoli more easily. Understand his words through something other than inference. And that... at least for her, it's not the same as the way she can communicate with wolves.

The way she talks to him, the way she looks at him, the way she stays in contact -- it's all trying to make up for the fact that they are touching on something that no, he can't entirely understand. They're toeing the edge of that gap between them that exists because of what they are. And she says, quietly, she doesn't think even the literally telepathic bond she has with her pack is quite the same as the way he is with his twin.

After that, Sinclair just has her second drink to finish and she just stops fucking around and moves her chair over by his. She tells him quite plainly she'd just sit in his lap if it wouldn't look totally weird and lame to be acting like a thirteen year old in public or something.

But that's what it is. No two people can ever understand each other perfectly. They have a wider chasm to bridge than most -- technically they're not even the same species.

They talk about the zoo. About she says that before they go to Kansas she will absolutely get him a pair of sparkly red slippers -- or silver ones, if he'd like. Teases him, and he says they can put Tripoli in a basket, and she tells him to remind her when they get home and she'll find that picture of her dressed as Alice in Wonderland for some Halloween, which has nothing to do with the Wizard of Oz except that when she was a kid and saw one movie for the first time it set off a chain reaction of any story that involved a young girl going into some Magical World. Hence: Dorothy. And Alice. And a dozen others.

On the way back, they're close. They managed to talk about more than one semi-rough thing and didn't melt down, blow up, or shut off. She's happy, nuzzling him and laughing when he takes over board duty, kissing his neck again before settling down, pleased. Breathing in his scent, still salt-watery, still Alex.

"I know," she murmurs, when he tells her he likes her. "I like you, too," she says, because... it doesn't really matter if it sounds like reciprocation. If it sounds meaningless with the 'too' attached, if it makes it sound like she's just saying it because he said it or something retarded like that. She holds him, breathes him in for a moment as she gives him a tight squeeze. "I've always liked you."

She ignores the lot, because she has, in fact, forgotten for the moment how it made her feel before. But as they're going through it she feels tension and it makes her quiet, blissful little expression tighten up a bit. She frowns and glances over her shoulder, past his arm around her, looking into the darkness.

"Hang on a second," she whispers, and stays very still, listening. Watching. Sniffing the air once, a single deep breath that makes her nostrils flare out.

[Warcry] [perception / alertness]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 4, 4, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)