"Serves you right for sleeping on the ground," Alex says, heartless bastard that he is. His voice comes from beside and above her. When she blinks the bleariness out of her eyes, she can see he's sitting with his back to the couch, chilling on his laptop. "Aaron went down to the Caern to finalize the paperwork on transferring, well, me. To you. Apparently there's like a 24 hour waiting period, lest people do things they regret while drunk or something.
"Dad's downstairs taking care of his product. And Mom went to work early today, and she'll be back at like two." He smiles, puts the laptop aside. "So it's just us for now, but Aaron was hoping we could have a beach barbecue this afternoon down in the Keys. We have a beach ball somewhere. I bet we could two-on-three them and win."
SinclairSinclair sticks her tongue out at Alex for the first words he says, and tugs the blanket -- which, having it all to herself now, she is cocooned in -- over her head. He keeps talking, and from her cocoon she smiles secretly, pleased at his nearness, pleased that everyone else is out and about and busy but Alex is right there, within touching distance, tapping away at his laptop and waiting for her.
Her hand wiggles out from under the blanket and touches his leg, resting there for awhile. Gradually she pulls the blanket back down, her hair even more ruffled for it. She makes a face. "Glass Walkers make everything so lame," she says, her aggravation only partly feigned. She wriggles out from the blanket, wrapping it around herself despite the warmth of the day as she scoots over and sits up, curling up to his side to peer at what he's doing online.
And there it is: that offhand comment about being a thing that is transferred via paperwork and a 24-hour waiting period, and Sinclair's equally offhand comment about how her own tribe is full of fail, and then sudden, near-full contact of her body to his. She curls up close to him and uses his bicep as a pillow, listening to him tell her who is where and what they're up to.
She smiles when he says his mom went to work early so she can come home at two. "That sounds awesome," she tells him, as he sets the laptop down, and snakes her arms around his waist. "And we can totally beat them. A pothead and a stringy Philodox and a yoga-kickboxing-office lady? We shall crush them!" she fakes a little roar to her voice, then yawns and smiles at him.
"Waffles?"
Alex"I don't know if we have waffle mix," Alex says doubtfully,
which leads to Sinclair huffing and explaining that some people know how to make their own batter, thank you very much. And so they do, mixing eggs and sugar and flour and cream, and by the time they're pouring the batter into the wafflemaker (because they sure as hell don't have a waffle iron) Greg is coming upstairs stripping his gloves off and sniffing the air, wondering what smelled so good.
Which leads to Alex telling him, and Greg finding syrup and fruit toppings in the fridge, and by the time they all sit down to breakfast it's closer to lunch, but no one minds because, well. None of them have a schedule to follow. They eat; they banter around the table; they eat more, and eventually Alex gets up and says he'll wash the dishes, and then he's going for a run because if he doesn't move soon he's going to explode.
"You gonna be back by two?" Greg says, tilting his chair back on two legs. "Mom's supposed to be home then and we're going beach barbecuing."
"Yeah, Aaron told me." Alex pauses by Sinclair's chair, leans down to kiss her cheek. "I'll be back in like, twenty."
After he's gone, Gary winks across the table at Sinclair. "I think," he says, "Alex is just making up an excuse to give us some alone time."
SinclairShe does, in fact, point out that way back in the long-ago before-time, people made waffles and pancakes and even biscuits from scratch. However, when Sinclair manages to drag herself off the floor and gets her backpack from the car and washes up and changes into a set of clothes that is almost identical to what she was wearing before only clean, she comes into the kitchen putting her long, wet hair up in a bun and scoffs that of course she doesn't know how to make her own batter, does he think she was raised in the 50s?
They manage. There are cookbooks, but neither of them think of grabbing them before they already have sixteen recipes for waffles on their smartphones. Sinclair sits on the counter, swinging her legs and directing Alex happily, kicking him gently every time he grumbles that maybe she could get off her ass and help.
"I'll be on Cool Whip duty," she declares. Which includes taking it out of the freezer so it can thaw. Which is a lot of work, she informs him.
Sinclair eats two and a half large Belgian waffles. She tells the table that Alex is a really good cook and wonders why they have strawberry topping and no waffle mix, to which Greg says that they're just out. She laughs and asks him if he's ever made hash waffles.
Alex derails that conversation quickly before it goes anywhere too interesting.
She perks as Alex moves, swiveling her head towards him like a dog noticing its master leaving the table. That isn't their relationship. Not even close. But she reacts to him like he is her human, and the only real experience most mortals have with that feeling is when they've had a dog -- some primal, adoring creature who is simultaneously viciously protective, strongly possessive of them. My Alex, she says sometimes in bed, either when she's glomping onto him to sleep or when he's coming down over her, panting softly in the aftermath of what they've done to each other.
He's going for a run, and she smiles. "'Kay," she tells him, leaning into that little kiss and watching him as he heads out. Turning back to the table she contemplates having the second half of that third waffle, when Greg chimes in and suggests that Alex is just trying to give them time alone.
Sinclair laughs and shakes her head. "Actually, he probably will explode if he doesn't go on a run soon. That's like... some people have coffee or do a crossword and they don't feel human if they don't do it every morning. Alex goes for a run. He's skipped a few times during this trip because we were on the road or going somewhere or whatever, but if I made a line graph of days when Alex doesn't get a morning run and days when we end up fighting over something stupid, there would be some iiinteresting correlations."
She lifts her fork with its bite of waffle and strawberry and Cool Whip and considers it thoughtfully. She looks at Greg, though, and gives a small, semi-awkward smile. "Of course I was also the one last night saying I didn't want to go home yet because I'd hardly even met all of you." She shoves the mouthful in... well, her mouth, chewing as her cheeks color slightly.
AlexSomewhere in the middle of waffle duty -- sometime around when Sinclair talks about Cool Whip -- Alex snickers and says cool hhwip, and Sinclair has no idea what he's talking about, and of course he has to stop everything and go get his laptop and show her the relevant Family Guy clip.
That waffle, needless to say, comes out a little burnt.
Now -- as the front door bangs shut as Alexander Vaughn goes for his Run Of The Day -- Greg gives Sinclair a look that's almost comical in its startlement. "That boy was going to go home today? What's the big rush? You just got here." And he serves himself another ladle of strawberry topping, then pushes the bowl over toward Sinclair, beckoning for the Cool Whip in exchange.
Sinclair"Right?" Sinclair says, smacking the table lightly, her tone and expression one of finally, someone gets it! "We stayed like...forever or something at my parents' place and Alex was thinking like, one more day and I was like are you serious?"
Only it wasn't quite like that, because in reality she was curled up on the floor with Aaron and Alex and a star-turtle and trying to wrap her mind around the fact that she might leave her not knowing much more about Greg and Ellen -- and Aaron -- than what she'd known before she came.
Belatedly, she nudges the Cool Whip over, leaning on the table. That last bite seems to have done her in. "It doesn't seem fair," she says, somewhat out of nowhere.
AlexGary tips his head to the side, half his mouth turning up in a curious little smile. "What doesn't?"
Sinclair"When we got to Kansas," Sinclair begins, moving another bit of strawberry around on her plate, painting the Cool Whip pink with it, smearing it around in fluffy, red-streaked beauty, "Alex ended up sitting out on the deck with my dad for awhile, and I know they kinda talked about...me, and us. And the fact that last year we split up and I was --"
The words that accurately describe how Sinclair felt when Alex wasn't in her life are harsh words, suitable for two a.m. and beyond but not early afternoon, not sitting in front of a table of waffles with a man she's just met. Inconsolable. Heartbroken. Broken, period. Shattered.
"-- a total mess," she settles on. "I didn't talk to them about it, really, but they knew. And there was this whole thing, you know -- Alex wanting them, maybe especially my dad, know that that wasn't going to happen again. And that he wanted them to like him or whatever, but if they didn't want him with me he still wasn't going to leave."
She looks over at Greg. "It wasn't quite the same as going to some girl's parents and asking them for their blessing or whatever. And it's not like my dad was cleaning his rifle when we got there or something. But there was this guy showing up who they knew had hurt me, and sort of asking them to be okay with him sticking around." She doesn't mention anything about marriage, weddings, proposals, saving the date -- it doesn't seem right, with Alex and Ellen both absent, to bring it up.
"And here you and Ellen are, and I'm here, and I could hurt Alex more than anyone. I... don't know what you know about me, or if Aaron's told you stuff about me, or if you even worry about it or wonder what the hell, because Alex was so... anti-mate for however long. But I don't have to show up and ask you to be okay with me... being with your kid. Because it was settled before I even met you. There's got to be this nagging feeling somewhere, like... a splinter, even if that's all it is, that what you think of me or how you feel about me doesn't even make a difference. And it just doesn't seem fair to me."
AlexGary listens, and for what it's worth his eyes don't flinch away even when Sinclair tells him his son broke her heart. That's not what she says, but that's what he hears; it's what anyone, listening would hear.
And for what it's worth, he really listens. Seriously, quietly, absorbing what she says to him. When she finishes, the corners of his mouth move again. He laughs, but it's not meanspirited.
"Sinclair," he says, "when Ellen and I got married, she was three months pregnant, we were sophomores in college, and we so poor we could barely afford bicycles to get around, let alone a car. Neither of our parents were happy about it, but if we'd listened to them, we wouldn't have what we have today. We wouldn't have each other, we wouldn't have this home, we wouldn't even have our boys. So the way I see it, what Ellen and I think about you, or you and Alex, doesn't make a difference. And it shouldn't. It's your lives, and you should have every freedom to do what you want with them.
"Now that said, if you still want to hear what I think -- well, I have to admit, when we first heard about Alex suddenly taking up with a werewolf, I had my concerns. It wasn't even the baseline oh werewolves are dangerous thing. It was just -- his history, you know. I couldn't really see it ending well, and I wasn't too surprised when he called one day and said he wasn't in Chicago anymore and stopped talking about you for a while.
"What did surprise me was that after a while -- over that year you two were presumably not together -- I saw him changing. Growing up a little, maybe. And then you guys got back together, and he was so happy, and he was ... serious about it. He didn't say and do the stupid things he would've said or done back in the day, the sort of thing that made me go 'oh man, kid, someone is going to hand you your liver one day and it won't even be one of the wolves'. He just ... I don't know. He grew up."
A little pause as Gary eats the last of his strawberries, sets his fork down.
"And now I've met you," he finishes. "Am meeting you. And even if I did see a problem it shouldn't matter to you, but -- for the record, Sinclair, I don't see any problem at all. All I see is that you're crazy about each other. And I'm happy for you kids."
Alex[*coughs* GREG. GREG.]
SinclairGetting married while three months pregnant and a sophomore in college does not sound, to Sinclair, like the driven, MBA-type that Ellen still is and that Greg used to be. She flicks her eyebrows in mild surprise, but she's coming from parents who were in their thirties before they had her, who were well-established in their careers and had decided one night over a nice dinner that y'know, it might be nice if they had a child, too, and the subject they'd never really discussed at length was suddenly settled into a course of action.
And about a year later, they had a little girl they named Heather, and she kicked a lot even after she came out, didn't like water in her face, and couldn't uncurl her hands enough to manage thumb-sucking so she'd just shove her whole fist in her mouth and gnaw on her knuckles with drool everywhere. She never had a pacifier. They got her dolls because they weren't going to get her a sibling. She crawled like she was in a race. When she started hauling herself up to stand and started walking, it was because she wanted something that was higher than she could reach while crawling. She fell down and faceplanted on the carpet, bled from her sensitive mouth because she was teething at the time, and even while she was sobbing and wailing and hiccuping, she was flapping her arm and trying to reach for the thing she'd wanted off the shelf in the first place.
And her parents knew what they were doing by then, were calm about parenting, were calm in general about life. They took her to the pediatrician regularly and she had a very high-end carseat to make sure she'd be safe and sound even if a bomb was dropped on the car, and her grandparents had all passed away when she was still so young she didn't quite know what the death of a human being really meant. Sinclair has no earthly idea what they thought of Ken and Samantha getting married, but she can't imagine anyone having any problem with it.
She flicks her eyes at Greg when she says that as far as he sees it, what he and his wife think of Alex and she doesn't make a difference. The look is level, and doubtful, and yet not looking for reassurance. It's simply basic disagreement. And maybe semantics. She doesn't interrupt, though, listening to him tell her what his perspective has been this whole time -- from Alex and her first getting together to now. She knows what her parents' experience has been. She knows what it's been like for her and Alex. In a way, she even knows how Aaron has seen it. This, however, is a new side to the story.
And we know how she feels about a story. About true stories.
Her mouth flicks in a small smile that is endeared and affectionate when he talks about Alex growing up -- Alex getting his liver handed to him by someone for the stupid shit that used to come so freely out of his mouth. She's still smiling as Greg finishes up.
"You wanna know a secret?"
AlexGreg's eyebrows hop up; his smile is equal parts invitation and curiosity. "What's that?"
Sinclair"Alex wants to marry me," Sinclair tells him, that small smile still worn across her face, her body still leaning on the edge of the table. "But you probably already figured that out."
AlexGreg blinks. And then he laughs.
"I... didn't. But I do now! Wow." His eyes flick down. "Why aren't you wearing an engagement ring?" -- and then a groan. "Oh, don't tell me. He can't afford one. His mother's going to die of shame. Nevermind that I couldn't afford one either."
SinclairSinclair laughs aloud. She honestly did think he'd figured it out by then. There's color in her cheeks again, but it's mostly from pleasure. "Nooo, you can't tell anyone. And he hasn't like, um... officially asked-asked me yet. And you have to act really surprised if he brings it up."
She toys with the edge of her fork on the table, smiling happily to herself. "I don't really care if there's an engagement ring or anything. I just get all..." she can't find a word, so she flaps her hands a little and swirls them about and grins, "when I think about it."
A moment later, she pins Greg with a stare, brandishing her fork. "You seriously can't tell him I told you. He probably won't even care but you can't."
AlexGreg holds up one hand, oathswearing style. "You have my word," he says solemnly. And then the smile is back. "Not a single word. Not even a syllable. Anyway, Ellen would kill me too if she heard it from me. And she'd be very cross at you for not telling her first. So, for both our sakes, it'll be our little secret."
Alex's dad gets to his feet, holding his hand out for Sinclair's plate. "Here, I'll get that," he says, "if you wipe down the table and stick the cool whip back in the fridge. And then you can help me fill the cooler with ice."
SinclairThis girl can't seem to stop smiling now. She grins, and makes a crack about how that sounds like a lot of work. She resists the urge to pick his brain about his wife, and swallows the bundle of Ellen-related nerves that flops around in her stomach. Her plate goes into Greg's hand, and she leans over the table to start re-assigning lids to tubs of whipped topping, fruit topping, and flipping the cap down on the bottle of syrup. She and Alex weren't entirely tidy as they cleaned, even though Alex did some of the cleanup and dishes before he went on a run, so she and Greg are in the kitchen for awhile wiping off counters and the table, cleaning off the now-cool waffle maker before putting it away, and by then Alex is back.
Sinclair's hair is down now, dried in waves because she doesn't have any intention of futzing with it when it's this humid and just going to end up a mess anyway. She has on her Super-Grover t-shirt today, and is pouring ice into the cooler when Tripoli comes around the corner, whizzing along on his singular wheel and circling her left foot a few times.
"Oh hey, buddy," she says, reaching down to cup her palm over his helmet-like head affectionately. "This is Alex's dad Greg. Greg, this is my friend Tripoli. He's an elemental."
"Iiiii, Eeeh," Tripoli says, utilizing his new vowels and vowel sounds, rocking back and forth on his wheel. Sinclair mouths Hi, Greg to Alex's father, translating.
AlexAlex is back, all right. They heard him coming up the porch, and if that porch weren't concrete they would've heard him even better. As is, they could still hear him huffing and puffing, grunting as he went through his cool-down stretches, thumping heavily against the door as he unlaced his shoes and pulled them off. When he comes through the door, Sinclair's dumping ice by the bowlful into the Vaughns' big four-wheeled roller-cooler, and Tripoli is zipping around the corner way too fast.
"Slow down or I'll hike your insurance rates, you menace to society!" Alex calls, dropping his running shoes by the door. "Kids these days!"
Greg peers down at the elemental quizzically. Then a penny drops. "Oh, Tripoli. Alex mentioned him." He gives Alex a look. "He said he was a robot, though."
SinclairAlex, right now, is likely cringing, because he knows what's coming.
"He is so not a robot!" Sinclair exclaims at him, aghast. "He's a spirit in manifested corporeal form and he's not electric at all! Jesus Christ!"
Tripoli is jabbering at Alex with much the same fervor, quite offended. Yes, he looks like a robot, and Greg can see that plain as day. He is very much formed like a robot. The weird thing is how much like a robot he looks -- how that wheel sort of looks like rubber and how his eyes change color and so forth. But apparently these commonalities mean nothing to Sinclair or Tripoli, because she scoops up the eleven-inch-tall gaffling and they're both glaring at Alex.
"He's not a robot," she says huffily again, leaning over and kissing Alex's cheek, sweaty or not. "He's an elemental."
"Eee," Tripoli confirms, and she sets him down in the stainless steel sink where he promptly hugs the faucet.
Alex"He really likes metal," Alex adds, as though perhaps offering some minor relevant fact would negate his calling Tripoli a robot. Of all things. "We made him a playpen out of this big laundry bucket and dumped, like, empty coke cans and keychains and stuff in. He loves that thing."
"Where'd you get him?" Greg wants to know, digging in the fridge for cans of soda and beer to toss in the cooler. And, "Remind me, Alex, we gotta get some ribs and drumsticks at the store."
Sinclair"We being mostly Alex," Sinclair chimes in. "He also made him a Roman shield out of a Coke can and this weird lance thing, and sometimes he rides Alex's Roomba around the apartment like his own personal chariot. Hell, I think he sticks around these days partly just because he wouldn't fit in with all the other gafflings after how much we've warped his mind."
She goes to the pantry, looking for chips. "Once upon a time, a packmate and I went on a hunt and found these Spirals who were corrupting elementals and cyborging-out these poor dogs and doing all kinds of other awful shit. So we put a stop to it,"
which is the nice way of describing the carnage and havoc she and Asha brought down on that warehouse that night,
"and cleansed the elementals, and this one kinda... followed me home. He can change his form a bit, but mostly he just changes his size sometimes. In the umbra he sometimes shows up as just this... orb of metal, or a sheet of it, or a collection of spikes." She pulls out a bag of potato chips and some cheese puffs. "Do you guys have French Onion dip?"
Alex"Aw, that's not true," Alex says, bending down to pat Tripoli on his domed head. "He sticks around 'cause he lubs us."
Greg: "Might be in the pantry. If not, put it on the list. We'll get it when we swing by the supermarket."
Alex: "He shows up as spikes?" And on that note, he gingerly pulls his hand back from Tripoli's head. Just in case he decided to show some spikes up right now.
Sinclair"That too," Sinclair concedes, concerning Tripoli, who is hanging by his arms from the faucet and swinging, staring at his mottled reflection in the brushed metal of the sink. Alex pats him, and Tripoli eees like a cat might pur, happily rubbing his helmet into Alex's palm.
"Yessir, sir," Sinclair tells Greg, and opens up the grocery app on her phone to tap in ribs an drumsticks and dip. And ice cream sandwiches, which she will pack in three layers of solid ice if necessary. She looks over at Alex, smiling gently. "Only in the umbra. I think he saw non-Theurges trying to communicate with lumps of concrete a few too many times at moots, so he shows up as something kinda... anthro. He's very smart," she adds, and Tripoli all but preens.
"When is Aaron getting back?" she asks. "It's not like they have to go find a notary." There's a beat. "And if they do, there's gotta be plenty of Theurges there than can affix a spiritual seal on something, eff-eff-ess."
Alex"He's supposed to be back before Mom gets back," Alex says. "Though maybe he got -- "
Their eardrums abruptly press in. Out of thin air appears Aaron, brushing patternwebs off his shoulders. "Sorry about that," he says, a little breathless. "A couple Lost Dog spirits wanted to play fetch. They helped my pack out a while back so I didn't feel right telling them to get lost." He brightens abruptly, realizing his pun. "Haha. 'Get lost'."
"You're such a dork," Alex says affectionately.
SinclairSinclair looks more alert at that press, sharpened suddenly. She expects it to be Aaron. She is ready for it not to be. When it turns out to be the Philodox himself, she grins in hello and laughs at him having to go play fetch with Lost Dogs. "A huge dork," she agrees with Alex on the pun, though. "This is Tripoli, my familiar," she tells him, as the elemental waves at the new Walker, saying Iiii! happily.
Sinclair bends at the knees to set him down, taking her hairband off of her wrist and fingerbrushing her hair back off of her face to put it up. "Everything settled?" she asks Aaron, avoiding putting into words the exact nature of his morning's errand. "I don't need to go get fingerprinted or anything?"
Alex"I think my word's good enough," Aaron says, and just a hint of pride colors his voice. "I'll never be a sage for the ages or a warmaster to lead armies, but the Sept knows me and they know anyone I'm all right with can't be all that bad." He looks at the icebox, then. "Oh, are we packing for the picnic already? Are we doing ribs?"
"And drumsticks," Greg confirms.
"And dip." -- Alex.
Aaron: "More dip? I thought we ate it all."
"Not Mom's, just storebought."
"Aw. Well, let me grab a quick shower and get changed. Mom said she'd be home soon." Passing Alex, he sniffs dramatically. "You need a shower too. I'll use Mom and Dad's bathroom; you can use our old one."
"Thank you," Alex says, overemphasized, "I hadn't realized I stank until now." He wraps his arms around Sinclair, tight enough to more or less envelope her in the stink, kisses her neck. "Be right back."
SinclairHer eyebrows lift at Aaron's unabashed but restrained pride, but her smile is genuine -- it's good for him. And there are times when she wishes she had that sort of reputation, rather than one that keeps her silent at moots because of all the times she wasn't silent. Or all the times when she fucked up so badly that her credibility was strained and the Ragabashes of Chicago -- by and large the sort of New Moons that made her wonder if other septs sent their shittiest ones there to rot -- picked at every vulnerability, real and imagined.
"French Onion," she chimes in. "That dip was amazing last night, though. Maaaybe someone will teach me how to make it," she muses aloud, and is turning to add something to the list when Alex wraps her up in his stench. She wrinkles her nose, grinning, and kisses him again. This time it's his mouth, as he's lifting it from her neck. He doesn't stink to her. He smells like hot, healthy sweat, like the sun outside, the neighborhood they're in. Like palms. Like Alex smells when he's just fucked her, or after a workout, or after they've been tussling on the living room floor, or the way he smelled as they fell asleep last night.
He heads off, and she smiles, leaning over to help finish packing the cooler.
AlexSoon after the brothers Vaughn disappear off to their respective showers -- Alex singing something obnoxiously loud, probably just to be obnoxious -- the garage door opens and Ellen rolls her hybrid Lexus in. A little later, the door rattles closed; Alex's yoga-pilate-kickboxing, high-heel-and-business-suit wearing, Corporate-Wolf-only-not-a-Wolf mom walks in.
Of all the Vaughns, she's the one Sinclair is most uncertain about. She's most unlike her; she's had the least time with her. She reminds Sinclair of Regina, which is a whole 'nother can of worms. And, on top of all that, she's the future mother-in-law.
Yet this is also - no matter what she looks and acts like now - the woman that met the apparent love of her life when she was eighteen. Got pregnant when she was nineteen, maybe twenty. Got married despite what the parentals said or wanted; stayed with him for nearly thirty years and counting despite all the statistics and odds. Had a kid, had two kids, got her degree anyway -- and then a few others by the looks of it -- got out into the world and got shit done.
There's similarity there after all. Maybe not on the surface, but beneath it. A certain strength, to be sure. A certain commitment to family bonds. Blood-ties.
"Wow," she says, hanging her purse up on the coat-rack that seems to be there solely for the purpose of hanging bags: Florida hardly needs coats, after all, "you look ready to go. Let me change out of these clothes and we'll be on our way."
Which is what they do. Five or ten minutes later, one Vaughn after another pops out of their respective changing rooms. Alex is in red again: red t-shirt, white shorts. He looks hotblooded and summery. He looks tanned and fit and, frankly, a little like a Miami douchebag with his aviator sunglasses on. Aaron tells him so, pulling a bucket hat on, and gets teased mercilessly for looking like a complete dork with that hat on, jesus. Mom breaks it up with a sort of absentminded familiarity; Dad, despite his two strapping sons, insists on hauling the huge cooler out to the car himself.
They all pile in. The 'kids', as Greg insists on terming them, sit in the back. They make a stop at the supermarket, split up and hit all the items at once, emerge in five minutes and dump a package of ribs, a bag of drumsticks, and a pack of ice cream sandwiches in the cooler. Alex says those ice cream sandwiches are going to melt. Sinclair shoves them all the way in the bottom and insists they won't. Then they pile the chips and the new dip on top, get back in, and drive.
It's sort of a long way out to Key West. The road runs along the archipelago, sometimes on land, sometimes on endless bridges across open water. The farther out they get, the fewer people there are. Aaron says Key West itself gets busy again, though, so they stop a few miles short and get out and this time the brothers haul the cooler between them, each handle in one almost-identical hand. Oddly balanced like that, Alex can't quite swagger the way he does; Aaron can't quite move with his customary modest precision, and they even walk alike. Sinclair brings the bags of chips and dip and the beach blankets. Ellen brings a big beach umbrella out from the back of the Lexus, and Greg, following, is redfaced from blowing up the beachball.
There's one other family way down the beach. Other than that, they have the beach to themselves, pristine and pale, the waves lapping calmly against the shore. Aaron and Alex set down the cooler, and then Alex goes running back for the barbecue grill while everyone else starts putting beach towels down and taking shirts off and slathering sunscreen on.
"Now," Ellen says to Sinclair, rubbing sunscreen into her yoga-pilates-kickboxing-toned arms, "I have to admit the surf's better over on the west coast. But there's really nothing like a Florida beach in the entire continental U.S."
SinclairSinclair is leaning against the edge of the table, and Tripoli is inspecting a twanging doorstopper, when Ellen comes in. She greets the woman with a smile more restrained than the grins she's now comfortable giving Greg and Aaron. It isn't that she reminds her strictly of Regina, just... she looks like someone Regina would approve of. This is how Glass Walkers and their Kin are to be. This is what is prescribed. And it makes Sinclair deeply uneasy, no matter how intellectually able she is to keep Ellen separate from all of that, no matter how able she is to remember that Ellen is an unknown.
That Ellen is an unknown makes her uneasy, too. In a different way. If she fit one particular mold then Sinclair would start to make assumptions she could understand, but Ellen doesn't do that, either. She knows now how Ellen and Greg got together, and why Aaron and Alex exist, and it doesn't fit with the prescribed way of things. Doesn't fit with the mocha-colored pantsuit.
Besides. Her father wears mismatched slacks and blazers over blue shirts and only owns a few ties, and his office at the university is a mess. Her mother wears paint-stained overalls and t-shirts to do her job, and instead of a pantsuit she wears maybe a simple dress or skirt and blouse for meeting with publishers or writers or her agent or whoever.
"Oops," Sinclair says, and ducks out to the boys' old bathroom while Alex is showering so that she can change into her bikini before pulling her clothes back on over it. Given how many she owns -- and even how many she brought on this trip -- it warrants noting. This is the yellow one, the cups ruched over her breasts, the ties behind her back and around her neck made of wide, stretchy material that drapes and dangles and likely would make any eleven year old want to tug them free if he didn't mind losing an arm for it. It's bright and cheery and not as skimpy as, say, the metallic-green one she wore in Rio. She pulls on her tee and her shorts and darts back out, shoving panties and bra into a backpack for later, asking Ellen where the towels are to bring along.
Her eyebrows flick up as Alex is mocking Aaron for his dorky hat, and later on in the car Alex is left out as Sinclair pulls out her phone to show something to Aaron, snickering with him. It's Alex from a couple of years ago, his arms thrown out in a mimic of the Giant Jesus statue down in Brazil, a fucking fisherman-style bucket hat on his stupid head. She's squished between the two boys in back, and after they pile out into the store and back in, she insists repeatedly that the ice cream sandwiches are not going to melt.
"Only if you're a total loser and don't eat them fast enough," she claims, sneaking one -- or two -- out during the drive to snack on in the back seat. She ends up falling asleep on Alex's shoulder halfway to the Keys, while discussions of where exactly to stop go on over her head. Sinclair misses it when someone asks if nine or ten hours wasn't enough for her, misses Alex's response whatever it is, and yawns broadly when she's nudged and murmured and jostled awake again to unload the car.
"Whumm?" she seems to ask, and sniffs, blinking a few times before scrabbling around for her shades and putting them back on. Sinclair gets the bag of dry foods to carry, wiggling out of her flipflops and carrying them as soon as they hit sand. She watches Aaron and Alex a bit as they walk, fascinated the way that people so often are by twins.
When they find a place to settle, and Ellen goes about setting up the umbrella with Greg, Sinclair starts laying out towels and the big blanket they brought, stretching. She peels off her t-shirt and drops her shorts, beach-ready with her hair already tied and flipped and bound up off her neck. She's already tan from San Diego, from the road, but explains that's even after sunscreen, so she doesn't skimp. It isn't like she's going to get skin cancer. It isn't like she couldn't heal a sunburn in an eyeblink. But she goes through the ritual because she's been doing this since she was a kid, and it seems wrong to give it up.
She perks when Ellen speaks. "Do you like surfing?"
Alex"Absolutely." Ellen's forthright, even vehement, about this. "Alex's dad and I met on the Santa Barbara surf team. UCSB, that is. We're west coasters by birth. And you wouldn't know to look at him now, but Greg could carve like a shark in college."
"Ellie thought I was a studmuffin," Greg puts in, waggling his eyebrows.
"Weren't you putting the grill together?"
"I thought she was a babe, too," Greg adds, and this time Ellen simply ignores him.
"When we moved out here," she goes on, "it took me months to find anything positive to say about the beaches in Florida. But you know, it's funny. Eventually you stop thinking about what you left behind, and then you see what you have now. And the busier life gets the more you appreciate the quiet moments. There's actually a spot a little up north where the coastal plain isn't so wide and the waves come in off the Atlantic. Rather decent, really. But you know what? I almost never go there now. I bring my beach books and Greg brings his grill and sometimes we just have a nice, quiet afternoon together.
"If you want to catch some waves though," she adds, "we can go up tomorrow morning. There's one thing you don't get on the west coast, and that's a sunrise over the ocean."
SinclairThis is all news to Sinclair. She actually stares at Ellen with her mouth slightly open to hear that they went to UCSB, that the words 'carve like a shark' are coming out of Alex's mother's mouth, the way a Cali accent creeps into Greg's voice when he talks of the Babe and the Studmuffin with self-referential irony in his tone at the same time.
She blinks. "Why on earth did you move to Florida?" she asks, after all of that.
Alex"Career," Ellen answers simply. "Or put a little more plainly, it was the only place we could get jobs that would feed a family of four right out of college. California's great, but the cost of living in LA was so high even then. And we both liked being in large cities, so that narrowed things down quite a bit. We wouldn't have been happy in, say, Crescent City or Eugene, Oregon or something. And we didn't want to be in an affordable but scary neighborhood either. We had two little boys to think of. Plus neither of us liked long cold winters.
"In the end Miami just looked like the most feasible option. Back in ...oh, what was this, Greg, '83? '84? -- back then, Miami was just starting to turn into a real metropolis. It was right on the coast so it had that diversity we both liked, but it was still affordable, especially out in the suburbs. I was with a small real estate development firm, and Alex's dad was in software design when that was just starting to get off the ground.
"Truthfully speaking, we got on while the proverbial elevator while it was on ground floor, as the MBAs say. And the Sept around here, for that matter. But I think in the end neither of us was really the cutthroat business-and-politics type. Eventually the company I worked for was bought out by the Hyperion Group, and the Sept offered me a pretty good position. But by then I was more interested in nonprofit work. And a few years ago Greg decided he'd made enough money for the two of us to live modestly but comfortably whether I'm pulling a salary at all or not, so he told me he wanted to explore his own interests, too." Ellen shrugs, her smile wry. "I was all for it, of course. But I had no idea he meant setting up his own hydroponics facility in the basement."
SinclairBy now, Sinclair is lying out on one of the beach towels on her stomach, her arms folded and her chin on her forearm, listening to Ellen. Lord only knows where Alex and Aaron are -- probably helping Greg put together that grill while the wimminfolk lounge around in swimsuits -- but Sinclair is just listening, nodding at the problem with the cost of living in Southern California and the idea of trying to raise a pair of twins when you're 22 and don't know what the fuck you're doing and your family is only forgiving you for getting married because the boys were just so cute.
She wasn't even born in '83 or '84, so it sounds like ancient history to her, which in a way it is. To a twenty-three year old girl, twenty years is forever. It's almost all of her life. To Ellen and Greg, it's just around the corner from where they are today.
But Ellen has stopped talking, and it takes Sinclair a moment to rouse herself, shaking her head. "I'm sorry, just. My mind is so blown right now. Alex is the anti-Galliard. Aaron said all he told you guys was that I'm awesome and so forth? Well, yeah. Imagine what I knew about you before we showed up yesterday."
AlexActually, 'the boys,' as they forever will be to their parents, are over there bouncing the beachball around between themselves like a volleyball. Greg is humming to himself as he dumps charcoal into his classic round grill, his skin already flushing from sun and heat.
"Well," Ellen says simply, "if there's anything you want to know, hon, just ask."
Sinclair
Sinclair glances over at 'the boys' with the beach ball thoughtfully. The sun is high and baking their skins. She can tell who is who -- she can't imagine a time in her life when she wouldn't be able to know, at a distance and even if they were dressed alike and trying to fool her, which male was her mate. Sinclair doesn't even know quite what it is, if not scent or sight or swagger. Unless it's the same core knowledge she had when she went home to see her parents for that first time in years and realized that something vital was missing if he wasn't there. Unless it was that wrenching realization after it all fell apart that she shouldn't have let him go, shouldn't have crawled into her shell after he hurt her, should have gone back and tried to work something out, even if they needed some time, some space. The very same gut instinct, when she saw him again, that it was okay to be together again even if so much of it felt awkward and uncertain. That the only thing that wasn't okay was walking away out of pride or some foolish idea of how things are supposed to be.
If she were blind, if her nose stopped working, if she couldn't hear his voice, she'd know when he was near. She'd know he was her mate. He bops the beach ball right into his brother's face and lets out a raucous, harsh laugh that -- in this case -- hasn't got a single trace of malice or venom in it. A part of her thinks if she doesn't go over there and hold him tightly, right now, she'll forget how to breathe.
Sinclair closes her eyes, and opens them again, smiling. She doesn't die from that love that aches, but she does eventually swivel around and look at Ellen again, resting on her folded arms. "That's kind of like that way-too-big-to-answer question they ask in job interviews and first dates, you know? 'So, tell me about yourself'." She smiles lopsidedly, and shrugs. "I guess a lot of what I've been wondering is what you already know about me. What you think about me. Greg says it doesn't matter, or shouldn't matter. But it does, to me. And with Aaron it can all be up front. I ask him what he needs from me so that he'll... well, let me be with Alex. And he tells me. And I do it. And even if we both admit that promises don't mean much and that we're also not going into the challenge ring to beat each other bloody before I steal his brother away into the night, there's still... a ritual to it. And ritual gives form and order to what is otherwise inexplicable, painful, and impossible to navigate. With you two, it's still inexplicable and confusing and I don't know how to go about it, but there's no ritual. Not even one we all agree is just a construct."
There are times, in all the 'like's and 'um's and casual, glib speech that rolls out of Sinclair at times, when it becomes clear just how intelligent she is. Why the Glass Walkers who refused to fast-track her because she was out of control also tried to groom her to be one of their best and brightest, not just another tac nuke for Gaia. Somewhere in there she stops talking to just Eileen and draws Greg back in with her tone, with the faintest shift of her body language, with a slight alteration to the volume of her voice. Somewhere in there she does what she always does and cuts through every layer of stupid bullshit as well as totally understandable bullshit and says this is what we're really talking about. this is what I really want.
It is difficult, when Sinclair begins to do that, to brush her off. Or to be polite. And as with Aaron, and even with Greg earlier today, it becomes easier to feel bonded somehow by that unflinching honesty that isn't really brutal unless you resist it. Then there's this: not knowing quite how to open up other people, she opens up herself to them and sees what happens.
One would think she'd have had her heart broken more often than it has.
She rolls over onto her back, taking a breath. "Yesterday I told Aaron I wanted us to be family-pack. And I had to talk to him about it because he's...well. The werewolf in this family. He's the guardian at the gate, as it were. So he let me in, and since we can't go on a hunt with our kin to bond, we all slept on the floor in a pile and it was like it's supposed to be. And it's so easy with them. Alex is my mate. Aaron is his twin brother. Aaron and I are both Garou. So we all kinda... already have our own foundation for that familial bond to grow out of.
"Aaron said something about you two not minding letting relationships just grow at their own pace, and not wanting to force attachment or accidentally smothering me, but..." She pauses there, pressing her lips together. "I don't know about Aaron, or about what it's like out here," she goes on a moment later, her voice quieter, "but my pack is a war pack. My alpha is the warmaster of my home sept, and in battle, I'm his second. But out in San Diego, most of the time I'm fighting alone. Like... way more than I think even Alex realizes. Way more than is okay, but sometimes you really do not have a choice and you can't wait for anyone else. And I'm not saying I spend every waking second obsessing over my lifespan, because I honestly don't, but..."
She exhales. "I'm very aware of it." Which is one way of putting it. She only vaguely remembers it, but they heard her speak about it at dinner, about children, about that always-off-chance she won't live to see the second birthday of any children she has some surrogate bear. That one reason for finding a nice Walker surrogate is so that even if Sinclair dies in battle, she won't be taking potential lives with her. "I don't want to pretend I have relationships that aren't real, but I don't like the idea of erring on the side of caution or reticence, either. I want... to leave here with Alex as my mate, that was the whole original point of the trip, but I want to leave here knowing you're my family, too."
Her hands are on her belly. That smooth, flat belly that reveals a little bit when relaxed and a lot when she flexes somehow the defined musculature beneath the skin. She rubs the cuticle of one thumb thoughtfully, then turns her head and looks at Ellen. "I guess all of that is just to say that I want to know you two accept me, too. Not just Aaron."
AlexEllen's eyes are on Sinclair the whole time she's speaking, but it's not the fixed, sharp stare of the driven, determined, corporate-savvy woman she seems to be -- and is. It's a sort of easy regard, eyelids lowered and slow-blinking against the sunlight, that makes more sense when Sinclair's done and Ellen turns to look out at the horizon and the waves rolling in. It's surfer zen, longboarder Tao; a certain relaxed confidence in her place in the world, in the significance of her insignificance, in the surety of waves coming in to shore no matter what.
"I'm going to say something at the end here," Ellen says, "and I don't want you to think I'm being careless or glib, so before I say it I'm going to tell you a whole lot of other stuff.
"The weird thing I've noticed about life, or at least about my life, is that even though I dot my i's and cross my t's and plan my day down to the minute sometimes, some of the most important decisions I've made were made just like that." She snaps her fingers. "Like they were based on intuition so pure it felt like instinct -- even if that instinct ran counter to everything else I had been planning for. Turning down the offer from Hyperion. Getting my business degree with two toddlers in the house. Keeping the boys and marrying Greg. Going to UCSB in the first place when I'd been accepted up and down the Ivy League. Every one of those decisions, I made in about five seconds, and I never looked back. They weren't even really decisions. I just knew.
"Now, I'm not saying the things I did were 'right', or even the things someone else should do. If you ask my parents, they think I've wasted my potential. They think I could have been the CEO of some Fortune 500 company by now if I hadn't turned out such a schizophrenic slacker. And they're probably right. But you know, I don't think I would have been happy like that.
"I'm happy like this. I'm happy exactly like this.
"So the way I see it, life is a lot like surfing. You can plan and prepare and train and work to get your body in shape, but in the end you can't force a perfect wave to come. Sometimes you won't even see it coming. But sometimes you can feel it. Sometimes you just know it. And then you grab that wave and pop on up and it's just ... a beautiful ride."
Ellen turns from the flat turquoise ocean again; smiles at Sinclair.
"So now when I tell you this, you'll believe that I mean it. I like you, Sinclair. I knew I liked you about two minutes after I met you. You're the newest member of my family, and that's that."
Greg's done setting up the grill. "I don't have to follow that speech up, do I?" he quips. "Can I just say 'ditto'?"
SinclairAnd this is what she wanted. Needed, even, when she laid on the floor in a heap with her mate and her brother and wondered if Ellen wanted to spend time with them at all, or if she'd get a chance to know them beyond Here: Eat a Brownie or Here: Let's Jog. Both of them understood that, Aaron and Alex, in their respective ways. So there they are, batting the beach ball back and forth, leaving Sinclair alone with their mom and dad.
Anyone but Sinclair and it would be more nerve-wracking, more awkward. But she hates awkwardness. She chokes on it and spits it back out, and that's why sometimes she lies there and she empties out her thoughts verbally, brushing away the cobwebs of what is considered normal, acceptable human interaction. Fuck that. She listens, closely, and a goofy half-grin flashes across her face at the term 'schizophrenic slacker'.
Yes, she can imagine Ellen on a longboard, while Greg would be out there carving tricks into the sides of waves, just as easily as she can imagine Aaron and Alex in the same positions. Truth be told, she can't say which she feels is more natural to herself. She goes out on the west coast and she just plays in the water right alongside Alex, because it's something they can share, it's an enjoyment they can both understand.
But then there's the other side of every Galliard. The wisdom that tags along with the glory and, as they attain rank after rank, comes to match and even eclipse it. She, like Aaron, can't imagine ever being some sage on the mountaintop for a pack or a sept, just like she could not ever really be a warleader -- a lieutenant, maybe, but not the general. She's no trickster. So maybe this is it: being the longboarder sitting out on top of the ocean as it rolls gently, watching the sunset and understanding how very big the water is, how very big and far away and slowly dying the sun is, and being at peace with it. And being the whooping, hollering shark cutting through the waves as well, the sun flashing off her teeth, off her hair, moving faster than even the wind can.
Being both. And understanding both. Translating between Ahrouns, teaching a spirit new vowels, forming whole new family packs out of disparate kinfolk, keeping Philodoxes close to emotion and rage and laughter lest they forget what they're really judging, smacking her packmates upside the head when they're being too focused, not focused enough. Knowing the history and the meaning of people enough to help them remember themselves. Remembering what some would rather forget, and bringing it back when it's needed.
She breathes in deep, and to say that she understands Ellen on a basic, gut level might go without saying. The truth is that she wants to shift. She hasn't in a few days -- again -- and right now she just wants to be a wolf, go over and flop in a furry mess on top of Ellen, her tail wagging mellowly, rubbing her head against the other woman until she gets some kind of physical affection, but there's that family down the beach. Sinclair makes a little oath to herself to shift later, to not forget that part of herself --
which is the very first memory, and the first law before any Litany, that she is what she is, and she must not ever, ever, ever let go of that
-- and exhales. Greg echoes Ellen, saying a basic 'ditto', and Sinclair huffs a laugh. Inhaling deeply agian, she rolls over two times across the blanket and the beach towels and flops her arms all across Ellen's lap, choosing to use other-mother's leg as a pillow quite suddenly. Though she retains that human shape, and all its intricate scarification and tattoos and piercings and blonde hair and freckles on her shoulders and familiarity, there is something undeniably canid about the motion, lazy and unhesitantly affectionate.
"I have just met you but I love you," Sinclair grumbles, quoting the dog from Up as she squishes her cheek on Ellen's knee and peers at The Boys over there with their ball.
AlexEllen throws back her head and laughs, comfortable with the way her newest family member, her other-daughter as it were, simply rolls over and flops into her lap. Another woman, another mother in law, one without a Garou son and one without a spontaneous, hot-burning son like Alex and one who's simply nothing like Ellen at all --
well, that other woman might be a little put off. Might pat Sinclair politely but uncomfortably and wait for her to move away. Not this woman. She doesn't quite glomp her back -- that's not her style, any more than it's Aaron's to grab his brother and thump him breathless -- but she lays her arms warmly, embracingly over Sinclair. And with a tenderness that Sinclair might recognize from her own mother, Ellen brushes sand off Sinclair's shoulder, out of her hair.
"Ditto," Ellen says, smiling.
Not too long after, The Boys get the sense that the Serious Talking is done, and they come wandering back. The beach ball's lost some air from getting battered around so aggressively by Alex, though Aaron's the one holding it by its rubber valve. He puts it down behind their cooler, letting out a little more air so it doesn't blow away in what little wind there is. Alex flops down next to Sinclair, half in the shade; Aaron stretches out in the sun, letting Hyperion bake him another few shades darker.
"We should go swimming at some point," Alex suggests. "Before we eat, because Mom's not gonna let us for thirty minutes after."
"You can do what you like," 'Mom' says serenely. "And if you get a stomachache, then I have no sympathy at all for you."
Alex turns his head, grins through his dark aviators and his white teeth at his mom. "Love you too, Mom," he says, and it's only half sarcasm.
"You can swim if you want," Aaron says, yawning. "I'm going to relax for a while."
"When are we eating, Dad?"
"We're eating," Greg says, coming to take a seat on Ellen's other side, "when your lazy butt goes and mans the grill. I set it up; I've done my part."
"Awesome," Alex says, flashing his eyebrows at Sinclair. "We can swim forever."
SinclairIt makes Sinclair happy that Ellen just laughs. That Ellen welcomes her so fondly, and brushes sand off of her. Sinclair allows her eyes to close for a moment behind her sunglasses, drowsy with sunshine and simple pleasure, then feels them drift open again. Ditto, says other-mother, and she just rests there happily, comfortably, until Alex and Aaron come on back, a little sweaty from sun and exertion.
Sinclair all but beams at Alex when he comes near, and forsakes the mother for the mate, rolling over and glomping onto him instead. She rubs her face against him, disheveling her sunglasses, kissing the side of his mouth briefly as though she could convey all of her emotion and comfort in a single gesture like that. Perhaps she does.
God, they are stereotypical in their beauty. Put-together mother, relaxed father, tanned son, freckled daughter, smirking other son. Sinclair lounges on the towel after letting Alex go and smiles lazily back at him. "Ocean swimming," she says, as though this is some kind of private joke between them.
Then suddenly she's up, darting away, running towards the water with some kind of half-unheard Last one in's a -- somethingsomething.
AlexMaybe she does convey everything she needs to in that one gesture. That one heavy nuzzle, that one brief and gentle kiss. When she draws back - if only a little - he smiles at her with one eye closed against the sun, one hand rising to cup her cheek. And he lifts his head, and all his family just happen to start looking else to give them their privacy, and he kisses her again, slower this time, infinitely tender.
They lounge for a while after that, Alex in his big bold red-and-black swim trunks, Sinclair in her cute, fun little swimsuit. They're stereotypical in their beauty; they could be models for some all-american brand or other. Abercrombie & Fitch: Summer 2011 Campaign -- Beach Days. He's ruddy-tanned and she's sunkissed blonde, they're both fit and young and they look like fun. Except - he's just a little too ripped, vasculature prominent on his arms. And she's just a little too intense, her eyes as brilliant as flame.
Small wonder they can't sit still for long. Small wonder she's up and darting away, and he's scrambling up after her and kicking up sand as he tears down the beach after her like there's actually a prize at stake. His parents and his brother watch them go, making no attempt to avoid being a rotten egg, or whatever it is they might be labeled for being last. He catches up to her at the shoreline, splashing through thigh-deep water to grab her around the waist and spin her around and toss her into the surf, laughing, diving after her, saltwater gleaming off his shoulders and flashing off his back as he disappears into the water.
Watching them go, Aaron hopes to himself that they have a lot of time together. Not enough, because he doesn't think enough could possibly exist for a wolf and her mate; but a lot. More than most Garou can hope for. Greg wonders idly what took Alex so long, and Ellen --
Well. Ellen is just glad, warmly and quietly so. None of them say anything. When they do speak, they speak of mundane things: hey, let's get some beers out. I think I'd rather have an ice cream sandwich. That sounds like a good idea -- toss me one too.
We should do this more often.
Yeah, we should.
They swim all the way out to the outer reef, where coral built over hundreds and thousands of years rise out of the ocean. Miami is a strange land: so new, so superficial, so hard and glittering and fearless in so many ways. And then at the same time: so fragile, so delicate, so unique; so easily tipped out of balance. It's a fine line the Garou tread here, the feral ones and the Urrah alike. Small wonder those tensions ripped the Sept apart, years ago. The land itself is caught in the same tug-of-war.
Alex isn't thinking of that, though. They haul themselves out of the water and they sit together looking across the open ocean, the salt water where the Gulf opens into the Atlantic. After a while Sinclair leans her head on his shoulder, and he smiles.
SinclairStrangely, it's Sinclair who both melts into that soft kiss and pulls back from it a few moments later, color beneath her tan and beneath her freckles on her cheeks. She's smiling, and she basically snuggles with him on the beach for a few moments while people discuss cooking, grilling, whether or not the kids will have to wait for their dinner. Alex, with his arm around her, implies that all this means is they can swim forever and forever, so
she's off, kicking up sand a few inches before he does, laughing as he tries to catch up, shrieking when she splashes into the water and he comes after her, throws her into the sea, coming up splashing and laughing all over again.
The are distant, vibrant specks for awhile after that to Ellen and Greg and Aaron, who eat ice cream sandwiches and pretend not to see how often Sinclair and Alex come out of the gentle surf just to kiss. Just to be close. Before, of course, trying to drown each other. She shows him how deeply she can swim, but this is nothing new -- Sinclair the athlete, the swimmer, the creature that seeks and protects primality no matter where she is, city or beach.
When they finally come out, dripping, knowing that the water will evaporate and the salt will dry to the skin, she sits in the wet sand where the water still comes up to lick at their legs and closes her eyes, resting against his shoulder. "You're so warm," she says softly, but he's always warm, he's like her. She reaches for his hand and holds it, as though in secret, on top of their legs.
A little time passes. It's almost four o'clock and she's ravenous since the waffles and the ice cream sandwich she had in the car and she knows it will be awhile before they have ribs, so she'll be eating chips soon to tide herself over. But Sinclair's stomach doesn't growl, and she doesn't get up and stretch and tell Alex that if none of the males in this family are man enough to cook some ribs, she will gladly char it all for them.
What she does, her fingers laced with his, is quietly say: "I miss the sunsets over the Pacific."
And a moment later, just as softly: "Tomorrow we should get up and watch the sun rise over the water."
She turns her head to peer up at him, her expression gentle in ways it so rarely is, so rarely can be. "Okay?"
AlexSo Alex smiles too, and out here, a long long way from the beach where his parents and his brother are, but not so far that he can't look back and see that white stretch of sand, see those festive colorful blurs that were their beach towels and their beach umbrella and their beach ball and their cooler -- out here where they're almost-alone-but-not-lonely, he's quick to nuzzle against her, rub his cheek heavily against hers.
"I'd like that," he says.
Their feet are still wet, glistening in the sunlight. Up higher, salt has begun to precipitate on their skin, and sand sticks to the undersides of their calves, their palms. This particular beach faces south, and the sun, heading westward now, casts their shadows off to the side. The sand is warm, and the water is warm, and the air is warm, and they're warm.
It's quite a long time before Alex bestirs himself, turns to kiss Sinclair's temple. "We should head back," he whispers, as though trying not to wake her, or wake the moment. "Get the barbecue started and all."
Sinclair"Mm," she says, peaceful but not sleepy, quiet but alert. Slowly, she shifts upward, holding his hand until necessity separates them, and draws him up with her. The way Sinclair heads back towards the water makes it seem like they're tiptoeing away from something, leaving that moment behind them but leaving it intact. This time they don't run splashing and shrieking into the water but slip into it and away from land til their toes leave the ground.
There's no competition in the way they swim, but there's still so much effort in it, so much strength. When one pulls ahead they don't wait, don't need to wait, because in a moment or two, a stroke or two, the other draws forward. They swim like they were born in the water, or born for it. And Sinclair is letting her hair down from its bun, shaking the wet and salt-twisted locks out as they walk out of the water back onto the beach where his family -- their family -- is waiting.
Aaron has his stupid hat over his face while he snoozes in the sunlight. Greg is sitting in this low folding beach chair with his legs sticking out and the way he grins at them when they come back suggests that he snuck a few leftover brownies to the beach. Ellen is sitting in a chair just like this, reading Outliers.
Alex ends up scaring the shit out of Aaron to wake him up, which results in a brief tussle and someone getting smacked repeatedly with that bucket hat. Sinclair shakes out a towel to scuff water and sand off of her upper body before pulling a shirt -- which is Alex's -- on over her bikini. It ends up being she and Alex who do the majority of the cooking, even if that cooking is mostly just heating up the grill, putting meat on the grill, and occasionally turning it. Sinclair eats a half-melted ice cream sandwich to finish off the box.
Dinner on the beach towels is a casual, messy affair. There is something animalistic -- mostly in Sinclair and Alex and Aaron, but it's there with Greg and Ellen, too -- about the way they shred meat from bone as they eat drumsticks and ribs. Sinclair insists on kissing Alex when he points out that there's barbecue sauce on the corner of her mouth. "Mwaaah!" she says, while he -- and, frankly, the rest of them -- all but flail in disgust. She snickers, and steals another rib, while beer after beer gets cracked open until even Ellen is on the more relaxed and socially-lubricated end of the spectrum and Aaron is actually stumbling over a few of his words.
Sinclair splits a brownie with Greg. The family down the beach has left by now, because they have little kids and those little kids had been swimming and running on the sand for hours already. The parents -- trying to tote blankets and cooler and food while also carrying their kids across their shoulders -- smiled and nodded to the Vaughns as they passed, while one of the 'sleeping' kids peeked over his dad's shoulder in curiosity.
The sun is still a long way from setting, but they all lay lazily on the beach after eating, digesting and floating and doing little more than baking in the warmth. Sinclair ends up telling some story about her pack in Chicago. In this story, there's this semi-crazy Irish Ragabash who gave Sinclair this insane battle-axe I wouldn't take into an actual battle if she paid me in the middle of a street, and when she describes her alpha's reaction she just makes a very stoic face, facepalms, and drags her hand down her features, distorting them as though this was actually what Lukas did. She describes the hand-axes he got her later, to which Aaron says
that is so cool
and Alex wants to know why he's never seen these,
at which point Sinclair offers to teach him how to use them, because when she's actually fighting she doesn't, it's just sort of an exercise thing between her and Lukas, which leads to another story about Lukas looking like he'd gotten into a fight with a kitten and Kate mocking him mercilessly for all the tiny scratches.
She's getting more restless then, and so is Alex, and Ellen and Greg are getting harassed for doing nothing all day, so Sinclair offers Alex's challenge: he said that they could two-on-three the rest of the Vaughns and totally win.
They do not win.
And as it turns out, the pantsuit-wearing Corporate Wolf-kin, the Calm Philodox, and the former-MBA-stoner actually all have rather fierce competitive streaks, which makes Sinclair and Alex both so happy they don't even care that they lost, nor does anyone care that the beach ball is so battered by the end of the day that Aaron wonders aloud if they should bury it properly.
Alex"We can't bury it," Alex says, straightfaced, and they're all slowly-but-surely cleaning up now: dumping the last of the charcoal out, mixing it with wet sand to snuff out the last of the embers, rolling up the beach towels, taking down the umbrella. "You gotta keep it as a commemoration of the one and only time you ever beat me."
-- which leads to a goodnatured squabble about whether or not that's the truth, and remember that one time with the storm and the baseball game, and what about that other time at the roller rink, and --
eventually, it's starting to get dark. The sky is an amazing fiery hue, and the earth is starting to fall into shadow, and they're dumping their cold embers into the special trash can, dumping their food scraps into the not-so-special trash can. The Vaughns -- the Sinvaughnclairs -- are heading back to their car much the way they came, the brothers carrying the significantly lighter cooler between them, Ellen with the blankets and Sinclair with the umbrellas, Greg with the barbecue grill.
On the way home, they're quieter, quiet and content in the darkness, leaning on each other in the backseat, watching the sky fade from red to violet to deep, deep blue.
Then black, and the stars are coming out when they pull into the driveway. And the little house is modest, and now Sinclair knows why: not because either parent is lazy, or incapable, or unintelligent, but because both did their time, enough to live comfortably but unostentatiously, and then decided: enough. They were going to do what they wanted to do now.
Which might explain why Alex has never mentioned his parents giving him crap for taking a Harvard education and applying it to Russian Lit and astrophysics. For taking that keen mind of his and applying it to figuring out how to hit someone harder, faster, better. It only has a little to do with not feeling entitled to pass judgment. It has more to do with the fact that neither of Alex's parents, really, are the type to judge.
But Sinclair already knows that.
They're yawning when they go into the house. And Ellen is getting stuff ready for tomorrow, and Greg is off to take a shower, and Aaron is saying maybe he'll crash in the guestroom, which used to be his room anyway, and Alex is taking Sinclair's hand and leading her down the hall
to his room, which he says really only became his room after Aaron started his Fosterage, because before that they shared it. It's his mom's study now, he says, but their bed is still there -- the little bunk bed where he used to sleep on the top bunk, because of course he did, though after Aaron moved out and he got too big for it he moved to the bottom and put a chair at the foot of the bed and stuck his feet out.
"Probably a good thing I never ended up basketball-player-sized," he laughs, and they turn the corner in the hall, and he flicks on the light.
The room is small; the lamplight is warm. The bunk bed is really the last reminder of what this room used to be. The rest of it is dominated by his mother's bookshelf (mostly nonfiction, mostly political science tracts and tomes) and his mother's desk. The desk is unsurprisingly clean and neat. The whimsical little paperweight - a ceramic dolphin that looks like it cost about fifty cents at some tourist surf shop somewhere - isn't a surprise, either.
"Let me show you something," he says, smiling, and tugs her into the bottom bunk. It's a close fit with the two of them, but they're used to that. He gets a sheet from under the pillow, and if she asks him why the hell he keeps a spare sheet under the pillow -- well. He shows her, tucking it under the upper mattress all along the edges of the bunk bed, entirely encircling the bottom bunk until it forms a makeshift curtain screening them from the world.
"When I went through my angsty teenage years," Alex says, leaning back against the wall, "and after Aaron and I got split up, sometimes I'd put up a sheet like this. Lurk back here and, I dunno, listen to loud music and write emo poetry or whatever. My dad dubbed it 'the Cave'. And after a while it was kinda nice. I guess the thing about having a twin you do everything with is that you don't even realize how little real privacy you have. So after Aaron went off to the Sept and I continued with school, I guess I started ... actually having some privacy.
"And independence," he adds a moment later, quieter. "As much as I always felt like I was protecting Aaron, it was just as much the other way around. And I did need to find my own independence sooner or later. So I guess it wasn't all bad, splitting up like that."
SinclairThey're leaving the beach when the sun finally does go down, driving off with the cooler and the umbrellas and the shaken-out towels in a huge pile in the back of the car. Sinclair breaks down and gives Alex back his shirt, having wiggled back into real clothes so she wouldn't have to sit in a semi-damp bikini all the way home. Her hair smells like salt water, like their skin all smells like sweat and sand and sunblock. The ocean washed some of the latter off of her, and as she -- again -- drifts to sleep on his shoulder in the car, he can see a little bit of pink on her nose and her cheeks, on the crest of her hairline.
He wakes her again when they get back to the house, knowing that no nap is ever going to stop Sinclair from being able to sleep through the night. She yawns, stretching again as they tumble out of the car. They leave some of the stuff in the car, because they can unpack it tomorrow, but the cooler is brought in and the melted ice dumped out into the sink. Someone mentions maybe watching a movie, but again, they're all a little more inclined to just get to bed, especially if some of them are getting up early to go see the sun rise over the ocean.
Sinclair says goodnight to Greg and Aaron, gives Ellen a hug and says she'll see her in the morning. Her hand is in Alex's, and they drift down the hallway as the voices of the other Vaughns fade behind them. She smiles, because there was no tour when they got here, and this is the first time she's getting to see where he grew up. It's quiet, and dark, and when he flicks on the light, she smiles and reaches past him, turning it off again. There's a window, and the moon and stars and some of the neighborhood lights shine inside. Sinclair smiles at him, leans over, and kisses him softly before they step further into the room.
She looks over the bookshelf, and the desk. She touches the dolphin gently, wondering if it was something Greg or one of the boys gave her -- maybe something they chipped in and bought together for mom one day, because she can imagine them as children, innocent of the cruelty life gives us so that we can survive, and she knows they were both generous kids. Rambunctious and intense and too smart for their own good and probably way too aware of how to turn on the right smile to persuade people around them, but... generous. Loving.
Or maybe Greg got it for her in Santa Barbara. Which also makes her smile. And makes her realize that she and Alex never get each other anything, really. They make each other food. Take each other places that they know will make the other happy. Make room for each other at home. And she thinks, taking her hand away from the dolphin, that they don't buy a lot of gifts -- large or small -- for each other because what they give each other is home. Food. Space. Warmth. The freedom neither of them have in the rest of the world. Home.
Let me show you something, he says, and she turns back to him, smiling again and walking a few steps over. She never had bunk beds, and most of her sleepovers were spent in the downstairs den on sleeping bags or out in a tent or something, so it takes her a second to realize what the extra sheet is for -- and it amuses the hell out of her that it's still tucked away in there. Sinclair crawls onto the bottom bunk with him, and when he starts to tuck it up to create a curtain she just says oh, cool... in delight and curiosity.
Now it's even darker in there, the light from the window diffuse against the sheet. She can make him out in the shadows, though, her eyes adjusting faster than any mortal's. She finds him by scent, too, by a sixth sense of proximity and direction, and when he leans back to the wall, she curls up at his side, draping her legs over his lap the way she does.
It makes sense that even after Aaron was taken for his Fosterage that the Walkers here would let him come home to visit -- she can't imagine he was anything like her. A teenager, to begin with, not so long repressed, not half-insane from all that pushed-down rage. And his family knew they were kin, and they were involved and connected and stable and there rather than across the country. Plus, there was just Aaron himself. A Philodox. A Philodox in a sept that wasn't trying to make him anything but what he turned out to be anyway.
Sadly, it also makes sense that the study-slash-guestroom would be turned into His Room, and that Alex would stay in the room they used to share. That the fights of teenage brothers that would be normal otherwise would get dangerous if they didn't have their own space. And as Alex talks more about it, she can imagine them fighting more and more. She has no frame of reference but her own independent streak, and the knowledge that if she were Aaron and her 'big' brother tried to snap back to the way things used to be, it would make her snap. And if she were Alex, she'd be...
so angry. So very angry.
It makes sense that after Aaron left, he never quite came back to this room. So Sinclair curls up with Alex and her legs are over his lap, her arm across his chest, and she just listens.
"You would have found it eventually no matter what," she says quietly, her hand moving gently on his side. "The way you two talk about being kids, it sounds like you always kinda knew you were two separate people. That you were different." She rests her head on his chest then, smiling gently. "And I'm glad you had parents that kinda... got it. And let you have a cave and stuff. It must have been nice having them to yourself for once."
AlexAlex has to consider that a moment. He's never thought of it that way before, just as he's never really thought of it as gaining independence before. It was always losing Aaron. Or just losing, somehow, something, somewhere.
"Yeah," he says quietly, a little later. "I guess it was. Mostly I just missed my brother, though." And another pause; his arm a familiar, solid weight around her, his chest a familiar, solid surface against her. "It's nice to have him back," he adds then, and it has the quality, somehow, of a confession. And of a thank-you.
SinclairTrust the only child to see it from that perspective. The difference between sharing your parents with a sibling and having them all to yourself, even when you're a teenager and acting like you don't want them or their attention at all. She holds him just as closely as before, no sudden squeeze or need to reassure or get closer. They've been so close all day. And it feels good. It even feels good to have shared him with his family like this.
The way he says he missed Aaron aches. It twists in her a bit. But no: she doesn't squeeze him. She just stays there with him, warm and worn out and enjoying both of those feelings.
He speaks again, though, and she stirs, tilting her head back so she can see him. "Why did that sound like you were thanking me?" she asks quietly, half-smiling.
Alex"Because you kinda gave him back to me," Alex replies, and maybe it's the darkness that lets him speak so frankly; so unabashedly. "I never thought for a moment you'd be the sort to tell him he could never ever see me again without your permission or some such bullshit, but ... you didn't have to do that family-pack thing either. I didn't know you would, or that you could, or ...
"I just didn't even know it was possible to knit us together like that again. Not just me and my brother, but ... all of us. Your parents, my parents, you, me, my brother. Everyone. I didn't think it was possible to heal that rift. And I know you don't do it just by saying it, but -- we didn't just say it. We did it.
"And it was really nice. So thank you."
Sinclair"Oh, baby," Sinclair says softly, and it sounds like the way he murmured it last night as they all curled up on the floor. "I... I just did that because I didn't know how else to do all this."
Which he probably knew. That it wasn't Sinclair trying to be nice. That it wasn't Sinclair coming up with a great idea and trying to implement it. It was just Sinclair being Sinclair. Following her instinct, which is -- perhaps -- why Ellen liked her two minutes after she met her, sensing something familiar.
She hugs him close, and then says: "The truth is, you gave me back my family, too. There wasn't even a rift between me and them, really. But there was one in me, and it was too deep to let me get back to them. I didn't think I could ever go back home and... belong there. And the only reason I did finally go back a couple years ago... was because of of you."
Her eyes close against his chest. "You gave me hope. You made me feel like I had a heart again."
AlexAlex knows that, of course. That Sinclair didn't do it to be nice. She didn't do it to make him happy, or to touch his heart, or -- worst of all -- to make him grateful to her. She did it because she's who she is. Because she follows her instincts, and because those instincts always veer toward loving those dear to her, and protecting those she loves.
She speaks of a rift in her, then, and he doesn't have the words to tell her how deeply and absolutely he understands her right now. How he finally understands that rift between the Sinclair that loves, that cares so deeply, and the Sinclair that rages and shreds and destroys; how he finally understands that it's not a rift at all, but two branches from the same root.
Loving those dear to her. Protecting those she loves. In the end, the caregiver and the savage are one: are the girl he loves, the mate he chose.
He doesn't have words for this realization. He doesn't even have room in his chest to hold it all, the ache of it, the adoration in him, the beating of his heart. She didn't squeeze him earlier when he spoke of painful memory-truths, but he can't help but squeeze her now.
"I love you," he says, half-muffled. It's all he can say; the only thing that comes close to encapsulating what he feels. "I love who you are. All of you."
SinclairWhen Alex woke up this morning he was lying on a bunch of pillows and cushions on the floor. There was a blanket over him and there was Aaron next to him, breathing steadily, deep in sleep. Sinclair was wrapped up in his arms, her feet draped over his and the blanket all askew across them. Sunlight came in through the windows that go out to the back yard. He could hear his parents' voices dimly down the hall, whispering so as to not wake up 'the kids'. His mother laughing quietly about them just piling onto the floor and going to sleep like they did.
That might have been when he first thought about Sinclair coming into this family and somehow doing whatever it is she did to bring them all together like that again. He might have thought about how long it's been since he and his brother slept close together like that. He had to have thought about how long it has been for Sinclair since she's fallen asleep in a pile with her packmates.
But then again, those thoughts may have quietly brewed beneath the surface of his thoughts all day. For all his brass and bluster, Alex sometimes takes a long time to process those deeper, aching thoughts. Sinclair has finally come to understand that, and she doesn't push him as hard. She knows how to wait. She doesn't let waiting get in the way of loving.
She doesn't let raging get in the way of caring, either. And that's the gulf in her that's healing, letting more and more of that heart of hers guide her instead of shushing it, shoving it down, telling it that she can't care like that and be strong at the same time. It's a whole new strength, instead, and shown last night, and shown today:
Aaron scooting closer to get under the blanket with them, quiet pleasure showing in his voice when he said that Sinclair talked to him about making a family-pack. And Sinclair hanging out with Greg, where for awhile there it seemed like he was the parent she was more relaxed around. Most of all the way he looked over at the beach and saw her flopping onto his mother, and his mother brushing sand away from her, and realizing how close those two could be -- and how unexpected it was, that those two would understand each other so intuitively.
There's already a great deal of love in this house, after a day and a half. And also, yes, the knowledge that should anything threaten them, Sinclair would probably rip it apart, and that Aaron is wise enough and knows enough about her to follow her into battle without question or argument. The knowledge that afterward, she would need to come back to this: the cave in the bunk beds, or the pile on the floor, or their mother's lap, to be healed not by gourds or bandages or apples but by that fearfully sought, freely given love.
Alex holds her, tighter now than before, as though overwhelmed by something inside of him and pulling her close in order to keep himself intact until he can absorb all that feeling. Sinclair buries her face in his chest then, as easily and automatically as if he'd asked her to, and wraps her arms around him a little tighter. She breathes in deeply and quickly when he says what he does, and squeezes him back until her arms ache along with the rest of her.
"Ditto," she says, and she means it, but then she laughs into his shirt.
Sinclair lits her head and clambers onto his lap, then, nearly but not quite bumping her head on the upper bunk, wrapping herself around him. She's smiling and hugging him, and he wants to know what's so funny, so she tells him about what she and Ellen talked about. Tells him Greg's little 'ditto' at the end, and how she quoted that silly dog, and how Ellen just smiled and stroked her hair and said ditto, too.
She kisses him softly, staying close, and she tells him the rest:
"I wanted so badly to shift right then," Sinclair says quietly. "I haven't shifted since that fight in New York City, and I haven't been a wolf since we were in Chicago, and right then on the beach it felt like the most right thing to do, and I couldn't." Her head comes to rest on his shoulder again. She's never really talked to him about this. This need, this ache. "I start... I start to feel kind of sick, almost. Like when you're coming down with the flu or you're really hungover and your whole body just feels stiff and sore and it's not quite working right. Like I don't even fit in my skin. Like it's too heavy."
AlexThere's a lot, in truth, they've never talked about or even thought to talk about before this trip. It's quite possible that when they set out, all Alex really expected was to drive around. See stuff. Meet her parents; meet his. He never expected to ... grow, really, the way he has. He never expected to learn things anew about himself, and about his mate, and about his mate's family, and about his own family.
When she first met him, Sinclair couldn't have possibly made this confession to him. He would have be afraid, and covered his fear with aggression. Some snarky, vicious comment. Some attempt to ward her away, get away.
It's different now. He listens, holding her, held by her. He's still warmed by what she told him about his parents, and 'ditto', and her. His hand is on her back, and his thumb strokes her skin through her shirt, and truth be told they should both shower before bed because they both smell like saltwater, there's sand in their hair, there's sand between their toes still.
Neither of them really want to move, though. She speaks of wanting to shift, which is something else altogether. And he thinks about this, mulls it over, processes at his slow, careful speed because as fast and impatient as Alex is about just about anything else in his life, emotional processing is one area where he's not adept. Where he's not, frankly, confident.
"If you need to shift," he says eventually, quietly, "I won't freak out. And if you need to ... run free for a while before we get in bed, I won't feel abandoned or anything."
SinclairWhen they first met, he would have been lying if he said that her shifting didn't unnerve him. He saw her change into hispo and then she and Marrick tore each other apart. Sinclair was all but holding her intestines in with her bare hands afterward, blood loss turning her pale while she told him where to find gourds and he helped her get to them. To this day she doesn't quite know why he helped. She's glad he did, she was grateful and that was really it, but every time she remembers it, what she thinks is that Alex likely doesn't understand why he did it, either And in the end, it doesn't really matter.
But she generally avoids shifting around him unless she has to. Unless their lives are in danger. Unless there's something out there that needs to die, and she's the only thing around that can kill it. The last time she shifted just to run, she did it while he was sleeping, and she came back before he woke.
She was worried that he would feel abandoned. Alone. Cut off, like he was from his twin brother, and now her.
They do need to shower, at least before they sleep. But Sinclair is talking about not going to bed but going out, and she thought today about asking Aaron if, y'know, maybe, if he wanted to go run --
But then Alex strokes her back, holding her close like that, and says he won't freak out. She half-smiles, because she didn't think he would, and then he goes on. Tells her he won't feel abandoned. She thinks for a moment and lifts her head, looking at him. "You could come," she whispers, half-hesitant, and then in a wholly different tone, as though hearing herself say this aloud has made the thought grow in her mind: "Come with me."
AlexAlex hesitates; he's so surprised. It's possible -- no, it's not even a possibility but a fact, a certainty in Sinclair's mind simply because she knows him and she can sense his reaction -- that no one has ever asked him to do this before. Offered this before.
And then - half-hesitant himself, though she's moving from hesitation to surety: "Okay." A second's pause, and then a half-laugh. More certain himself now: "Okay. Where? How?"
They're whispering. Like they're teenagers planning to sneak out after their parents are asleep. This feels a little illicit. A little illegal, almost, though not by human morals or law.
SinclairShe can feel it in herself: that difference. That change between who they used to be and who they are now, where he hesitates and she doesn't crumple inside and pull away. Where, when he finally says okay she doesn't disbelieve him and withdraw even further. So Sinclair grins when he says it, and then says it again, and asks her where, how. She laughs softly and suddenly snuggles tightly to him, giggling under her breath.
"Um. I don't know where," she says when she's calmed down enough to stop tittering. Her hand is on his chest, her legs spread to either side of his lap, a grin plastered on her face. "Somewhere nobody's gonna call animal control or something. Maybe we could just... drive west til we get out of the city and into the marshes and stuff."
She laughs quietly again, covering her mouth before taking her hands down to whisper: "We are gonna get so muddy." And covering again, laughing again, her eyes shining.
AlexThe second time she covers her mouth, he catches her hands; draws them down, kisses her. There's joy in that kiss, and love, and the adolescent excitement of what they're doing.
"Okay," a third time. His hands are still holding onto hers. He gets up, fingers linked, laughing as quietly as he can -- pulling her not toward the door but toward the window. "Let's do it."
