pembroke pines.

Alex

Morning comes, and Alex oversleeps his usual wake-up time. Maybe it's the time shift -- though in all truth, they've made the trip slowly enough for their bodies to adjust. More likely it's just everything that's happened. All the miles, all the days; her parents, his brother. What happened last night.

The truth is, he's barely processed it. He hasn't even begun processing. It -- it being his official matehood, his official-in-the-eyes-of-the-Nation's detachment from his brother and attachment to Sinclair -- still seems a very conceptual, surreal thing. It doesn't feel a part of him or his life. The moment it happened, the moment he heard of it, was lost somewhere between yelling at Aaron and hugging Sinclair and wanting to know why she was crying and leaving.

When his eyes open, he doesn't feel any different. A little lazier than usual, given it's well past 9am. A little more tired than usual, given the drive. But he doesn't feel mated. He doesn't know if that's supposed to feel like anything at all. Some part of him, human-born, human-minded, is still waiting for the black tux, the white wedding, the gold rings on their fingers. He thinks idly of having a wedding on the beach, movie-style. He thinks of inviting his brother for the bachelor party. And he rolls over and kisses Sinclair on her sleeping cheek when he gets out of bed.

Brushing his teeth over the motel sink, staring at his reflection in the mirror, Alex feels an odd twinging -- a distant and diffuse ache -- that he can't quite explain.

When Sinclair finally wakes up, he's just getting off the phone with his parents. "Oh good, you're up," he says, seeing her eyes open. "My folks invited us over for dinner. I said it'd probably work out, but I was gonna ask you when you got up. They wanna meet you. And, uh. My dad wanted to know if you like hash brownies."

Sinclair

Morning comes, and Sinclair is tangled half in sheets and half in Alex, glomping onto him in her sleep as she has most of the night. There is -- perhaps strangely, given the circumstances -- nothing protective about her arm over him, her legs wound in his. There is nothing possessive about it, at least no more than usual. There is Sinclair's unconscious, ever-present desire for closeness, the sort of insatiability that marks so many of her traits.

She is always hungry for sleep. When they eat she stops eating when he does unless she truly is ravenous, and then they don't have leftovers, because sometimes her metabolism works faster than her jaw can. Sometimes it seems like he can't ever fuck her enough to sate her, and it isn't hunger for orgasm or for him to pleasure her as much as it is to be near him, to feel him, to be -- frankly -- all the fuck over each other. But mostly, and maybe this is both the most difficult and the most endearing, she just wants to be near him, and one of the benchmarks of their success in this relationship is Sinclair's growing ability to stop reading Alex-wants-his-own-space-for-awhile as Alex-doesn't-love-me-and-probably-secretly-hates-me-and-that's-because-I'm-an-awful-monster-oh-my-god.

Alex unwinds himself, and goes about a version of his morning routine. Sans run, which might be contributing to his stilted, aching feeling as he wakes up. Might not be, at all. Sinclair rolls over, dragging blankets and pillows around herself in a cocoon as she does so, pushing her face into the warm place he used to be and snoozing on.

It's roughly an hour later when she does start to stir, moving gradually to wakefulness as he's grown used to seeing her do by now. It doesn't help to nudge her or push her along, which can sometimes be maddening. She'll get up and she'll force herself to function, but the best days are the ones when Sinclair just wakes up, at her own pace, in her own time, without being bothered about it. She yawns and she stretches and she wriggles and kicks and some of the blankets hit the floor and she sprawls all over the mattress and yawns again and Tripoli perks up out of his playpen.

Seeing her eyes stay open for more than a few seconds at a time, Alex says oh good, you're up and she gives a snort that seems to say I am nothing of the kind and she remains prone as if to prove her point. He talks about his parents and her eyes drift closed and she yawns near the end and goes:

"For dinner?" then just nods and yawns again, rubbing her face on the pillow. "S'good", which is sleepy-Sinclair code for 'sounds good' and is no language at all for 'What I heard you say was hash browns, which you know I love, but that's an odd food for dinner. Still, I certainly won't turn them down if your dad wants to make them, maybe we can have them with some ketchup.'

So there's that. She groans and wriggles and eventually pushes herself up and crawls naked out of bed and flomps over to Alex and drops herself in his lap, putting her head on his shoulder. "Whatimezzit?"

Alex

Sinclair gets a quizzical look as she's flomping over. "For dinner?" Alex repeats, clearly lost -- and then it clicks. "Baby, I said hash brownies, not hash browns. As in, brownies that'll get you high? My dad, uh."

There's a break in the conversation. She drops herself in his lap, a warm bundle of tan skin and toned flesh. He gathers her up. She puts her head on his shoulder, and he gives her a squeeze hello. As if they haven't been in each other's company almost non-stop for weeks now. As if they didn't just climb out of the same bed, albeit at different times.

"My dad," Alex continues then, "is a late-blooming hippie. He spent most of his life being an MBA drone. Then a few years back he went and had a midlife crisis, took his money out of his retirement funds and started, y'know. Gardening. Now he's got a little storefront selling homeopathic organic vegan medicinal supplement stuff. But it's just a front for his, uh, green trade. The Tribe gives him some legal cover, too, on account of my brother. And because I think sometimes they spike his product with ... spiritual stuff or something. To track someone they wanna keep an eye on or something. So it's not like my dad's gonna get arrested anytime soon. I hope."

His face is red. Alex never talks about what, exactly, his parents do. Sinclair might be able to guess why: her parents are so normal, so nice,, so Americana.

"I probably should've mentioned earlier," he adds. "For what it's worth my mom's ... y'know, normal."

Sinclair

"Still not a good dinner," Sinclair mumbles sleepily in regards to the correction, and yawns again. She nuzzles against his neck, curling into his arms because the bed was warm and his body is warm but the short walk from bed to his body was air-conditioned. She sits on him, lays her head on him, lets her eyes drift closed, and listens. His mate is awake, though, and he can tell from her breathing.

"That's cool," she says when he's done, before he's gotten to the point of saying he should have mentioned it earlier. It doesn't sound like reassurance, nor does it sound like dude that's so awesome. It's simply: cool, all right, whatevs. "My packmate's a pot dealer." There's a long pause, because she's still waking up and has to pause to yawn. "I'm pretty philisophical when I'm stoned. I don't like doing it a lot though. Sometimes it feels weird to be so foggy." A beat. Weird? "Not good."

Of course not. She's a predator. Sinclair doesn't even drink that often or that heavily, especially not now that she isn't Drowning Her Sorrows or Hating Herself quite as much. Of course she'd rather be sharp.

"But I also can't say no to brownies," she adds, mock-morose, opening her eyes and peering at Alex, giving a little shrug. "Especially not hospitality brownies made by my mate's father. That would be just awful of me."

Alex

"I don't get stoned," Alex says. When Sinclair first met him, he probably would've gone on to blather about how unhealthy it is, how it fucks up your brain chemicals, how the smoke screws with your alveolar membranes, blahblahblah, but -- well. He's changed a little. Grown up a little. He just says, "Same reason I don't smoke or really drink. It'll fuck with my reflexes. But that's probably not a problem for you, and I guess my dad's old enough not to need his reflexes anymore. Heh.

"But don't worry," he concludes, "my mom's not gonna let him just serve hash brownies for dinner. I think she was gonna pick up a couple Costco pizzas and some ready-to-toss salads. Anyway, we don't hafta go see them til later. We should go see the Everglades and the Seven Mile Bridge and stuff. You won't see that sort of thing anywhere else."

Sinclair

That Alex doesn't get stoned doesn't surprise Sinclair. He drinks only about as often as she does these days, and they drink roughly the same amount. But the difference between the health risks of all of these things and the foggy feeling and the reflex-dampening they do to Alex and what it all does to Sinclair is vast. She snapshifts and it's gone. She has what counts as reasonably vigorous sex the first time she ever has sex, and even the sharp pain and lingering soreness matters so little to her in the long run.

Her body renews and remakes itself every time she changes. She can get high and it doesn't make a goddamn difference. She can blast herself drunk and there's nothing long-term about the damage. She's a monster. She's supernatural. She's a fucking goddess of war.

Sinclair yawns in his lap. "I know," she mumbles, when he says he doesn't get stoned. She glances at him when he says it's not a problem for her, then smiles with a touch of drowsy wryness when he says his mom won't let his dad serve ganja for din-din. Leans up and kisses his cheek, giving him a hug with limp arms around his neck. "But maybe I wanna hang out with them," she murmurs, and nuzzles. "After we see the glades and the bridge and stuff, though. 'Course."

With that, she slip-slides off of his lap and onto her feet, and he can see even in that motion how her dexterity and grace return, how there's energy and even power in it, however loose and relaxed her limbs. She stretches, moving the scars on her back and tightening her ass, gently pushing her hips -- one enscribed with Proust -- forward as she arcs and lifting her arms with names and with spikes and with metal bars and words of wisdom up over her head, tipping her earth-signed neck backward, flexing her snake-wrapped thigh, her long calves, standing up on her tiptoes and lifting one foot at a time, rotating each ankle: the bare one, the one that marks both the loss of her virginity, the confusion and stars and palms and pain in those primal gardens, and the acceptance that words simply fail sometimes, especially between the two of them, and they have to speak with

things like sex. Or her arms around him. Or nuzzling. The way they hold each other at night like then, always then, they can't bear the human distance that inserts itself in their waking hours. Then, all the walls and the guards and the I-need-space-right-now-honey-s and all of it fall away, leaving them clinging to each other in a sort of utter, simple trust.

Sinclair relaxes and looks over her shoulder at him. "Did you already shower, baby?"

Alex

When she all but pours off his lap, rises to her feet, Alex sits back and watches her. She's beautiful in the mid-morning light; not merely in the twenty-first-century definition of the word, not merely because she's young and fit and high-breasted and thin, but because there's something wild and magnetic and true about her. There's something under her skin that can't be seen, but sure as hell can be felt.

He felt it the very first time, that hot summer's day by the pool in Rio de Janeiro, when she wore her viper-green bikini and lounged in the heat and was a little upset at him, a little glad to see him, a little lazy in the summer sunshine that suited her oh, so very well.

"I'm going to lie," he says, "and tell you I haven't so we can shower together."

And he means it. He pushes himself to his feet, the armchair creaking a little under the suddenness and force. Alex does everything suddenly and forcefully. He comes forward and puts his hands on Sinclair's waist and kisses her, right there in the sunshine, this wild, beautiful creature that was, in fact,

his now. As he is hers.

Sinclair

Whether he'd lied or not, she would have asked him to come with her anyway. The purpose of the question wasn't even thinly veiled, nor the look in her eyes -- not dark, not hungry, but inexpressibly, suddenly tender. Like a touch while he's sleeping, or when he comes back from a run or the gym and she's there and wraps her arms around him when he's sweaty and gross. Like the way she looks at him on those rare occasions when he's waking up and she wakes up then, too, opening her eyes and smiling that small, half-asleep smile she does before her eyes close again and she drifts away.

And it's true that she's beautiful, and it's true that he's hot and it's true that they're both fit and tanned and could model for some elite gym or fitness magazine, but there's more to it than that. Something working inside them, like electricity humming inside a machine, like a stone baked warm by the sunlight, like a rush of lightning just under their skins when they touch.

What he says makes her smile, and it's warm and pleased and oddly knowing -- odd, because he's watching her as she's changing from this chaotic, virginal, secretly uncertain thing into something wiser, who is both certain and secretive, whose inner self grows more complex and brilliant every day he knows her, a labyrinth that grows as he walks it. She turns as he's getting up and there are those arms of hers, those slender and strong and graceful arms wrapping around his neck the way they always do, his hands going to her waist the way he does that she loves so much.

Which is how they kiss, warmer than the day has gotten outside yet -- which is saying something, because it's Florida and it's summertime and the day is already hot -- and close. Sinclair brings her body close to his, but he can't feel that ring in her nipple through his shirt, and he can't feel the words on her hip through his fingertips, but he knows they're there.

They're still holding each other like that when the kiss ends, her freckles hidden slightly by her tan but visible when he's close like this. Sinclair touches the back of his head, her thumb gently sweeping the curve of bone just behind his ear.

"I'm going to say yes next time," she says quietly, and the corner of her mouth tugs out and up a little, slightly sheepish and mostly happy. "I don't even care when or how or where or if we have clothes on or if you're making me come at the same time. It doesn't matter." Sinclair smiles at him, her eyes young and open, without the starved, vicious look that frightened him so much at the very beginning, when the way she looked made him recoil, when he could see the violence and hunger in it and didn't yet know just what she was so hungry for.

Didn't know that it was something he could give her. Didn't know that it was something he would ever want to give her.

"But I want you to ask me again sometime," she whispers, that smile softening. "Because I want to tell you yes. I want to marry you."

Alex

Sinclair's growing confidence, her growth, is visible in just about everything she does. It's in the way she kisses him -- her arms wrapping around him the way they always do, but not the way they always did. There was a time when she was far from this creature she is today. Always so eager, but always with an undercurrent of uncertainty, as though she wasn't certain she was doing it right. Or more precisely: wasn't sure he would be able to tolerate her and all her wildness.

It's not like that now. Her arms are warm and slim and strong. She stands close to him, their lower legs brushing and crossing; their bodies coming into firm contact. Their mouths, too. They kiss each other with familiarity and surety -- and, yes, strength. They are both so very strong.

And when they part, and when she speaks, he smiles: a quick-flaring thing that brightens his tanned face.

"I know," he whispers, and leans forward to kiss her again, light and gentle on the mouth. "I know, baby. And I will. But not while you're expecting it."

His hands smooth down her hips; find hers. He steps back and their hands are linked, so their arms draw out between them, held by gravity and one another.

"C'mon," he says. "Let's go get clean."

Sinclair

There was a time when she would hold him with concern that he would reject her -- because she was wild, a predator, a monster, but also because she was simply her, and she didn't know who she was enough to defend it. It's meaningful that she wraps herself around him with a sort of entitlement now, like she knows full well she deserves him, because she wants him, and because she's good, and because he picked her out of everyone.

As she said to Aaron: and he didn't want anyone. But her.

She breathes in, still, when their bodies press together. When his leg shifts and rests solidly between her thighs, when she feels her breasts brushing against his t-shirt. She kisses him more deeply, a little bit of hunger in it, and nuzzles him when they part, staying close. Keeping their bodies close, too.

Her smile is softer. Those eyes, too, as soft as summer skies laden with coming stormclouds. Softness in her eyes is as strange as warmth in his, as unexpected, but as true. She smiles with simple happiness and hugs him then, laying her head on his chest. She doesn't let go. When Alex starts to draw back, reaching for her hands, she makes a noise of protest, and instead of letting him get her hands laced with his or pulling away, she just clambers up onto him.

Which means: one leg wraps around him, and one foot pushes off from the carpeted floor, and her arms tug on his shoulders, and her other leg wraps around his waist, too. She smiles, a little broader and a bit cheeky, when she lifts her head and looks at him. "Okay," she says, like nothing has changed since the last time they stood in their own bedroom, about to walk to their own bathroom, in San Diego.

Even though quite a lot has changed. Though maybe that can be seen not in how she treats him, how she is with him, but simply how Sinclair feels. The change is mostly for her, satisfying that deep and troublesome instinct: to have him for her own. To claim him as her mate, her kin, no one else's, hers. She doesn't suddenly treat him like chattel, it isn't that. What Alex can sense as he holds her is her relaxation. This strange inner calm, this lack of fear, this peace.

It has a name. That name is mine. It changes everything.

Alex

It changes everything, albeit in subtle ways. They aren't suddenly emboldened somehow. They aren't talking about kids, or even really about getting married. They haven't turned into anyone much different from who they were last night.

All the same: there's a stillness at the center of her now, that proverbial eye finally opened in her storm. There are philosophical implications to that, of course, and perhaps someone like Aaron would be interested in following that logic. Observations about how only the most ferocious storms have calm at the center. Observations about fear, and violence, and strength, and the not-always-clear relationships between these disparate things.

Alex isn't his brother. These thoughts don't even occur to him. He's just -- happy now, too. He was a little sad when he woke up, and he didn't overthink that one either. He sure as hell doesn't overthink this.

They go into the shower. They undress -- or he does -- and then they shower the way they do, sharing the water, sharing the hotel shampoo and the little bar of soap, brushing each other thoughtlessly and unashamedly, laughing when the soap on one flecks onto the other.

At some point, they kiss under the spray. And that changes into something else altogether. And then they're tugging each other out of the shower, and one or the other smacks the tap on the way out to turn it off, and they're still rather wet when they tumble into their sleep-rumpled sheets, and

the sunlight is so bright here. It looks good in her hair when it spills over the sheets. It shines off his skin, refracting across his tanned body as she pulls him into her, and down.

They're so chill when they cruise out some time later. They're so relaxed, and they have no fear now, and they drive along Biscayne and look at all the people lined up on the beaches like so many sea lions sunning themselves, and Alex remarks that he's always thought there was something vaguely gross about a billion people crammed cheek to jowl onto one beach, splashing in the same water, digging in the same sand, sweaty and oiled and -- ugh. Out across the keys they go instead, taking those vast bridges across even vaster expanses of shallow water; they stand out on the much quieter beaches of the barrier islands, walk out into the ocean, and they can go straight east for a mile or more and the water's still just up to their thighs.

They holds hands on the way back. Sinclair drives when they go to the Everglades, and somewhere out there, looking at the dense tangles of green life, the secretive and sometimes deadly fauna that conceal themselves within, Alex asks Sinclair to

tell him another story about being a wolf. It's the first time he's ever asked her so directly about that side of herself, if this could be called directness. He asks, though, and it's only curiosity; there are no ulterior motives. He's curious, and calm, and his feet are bare because he's kicked his flipflops off, and he's got one sticking out the passenger's window, the seatback reclined, watching the big blue sky over the swamps and the marshes and the wetlands.

Sinclair

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Sinclair does probe those thoughts. The lingering hints of sadness in Alex's eyes when she woke, and how the longer she was there and the closer she got the more they seemed chased away. The animal part of her mind sees only that her mate was sad when he was awake and alone, and now she's with him and he is not sad anymore. She keeps the things in the dark at bay, and this makes her happy, even when her human mind knows full well that none of it is gone, and that it will return, and that these are not things she can or should defend him against. They will come when they come, as they come.

She reflects that the real fear was not that Aaron would say no. That somewhere in there was the fear that it would change Alex. That he would feel it happen and not want it suddenly -- not so much not want her anymore, but not want to be her mate. Not want to belong to her. She was afraid she might bring him back into Aaron's shrine and that burst of anger wouldn't go away, that he would walk out on both of them.

But his arms were around her even when he was yelling at them, and he wanted to know why she was crying, and she couldn't have told him right then that she was happy, and afraid, and relieved, all at once.

That's the storm. All that fear and all that grief, all that self-loathing and loss and the potential for these things. That's the storm that's calmed now in her.

She pulls the clothes off of him quickly, but without rushing. She kisses the parts of him that come out from behind cotton, that hid behind a button, a zipper. She breathes him in and kisses his mouth when he lifts her up again, and the water is warm when he steps into that narrow hotel tub. Sinclair all but refuses to wash herself til he sets her down and starts. She unabashedly touches him, not caring if her hair gets fully shampooed or conditioned, because it's enough for her to splash around in the water half the time. There is simply no reason for Alex to be back in the shower with her unless it's to be close. Unless it's too touch.

This, too, comes from her animal brain. And it's strangely logical. She finds a certain spot on the side of his neck and that's when he pants out a breath and pulls her lower half against himself. That's when she makes a noise that's part recognition and part plea, and not for the first or the last time they go from shower to bed without grabbing a towel, soaking the sheets and blankets and pillowcases with water from her saturated hair, their damp skin.

There's nothing terribly special about it. No sense that they're consummating something or even celebrating something. Their hotel is just what was cheap and reasonably clean -- neither of them have a lot of cashflow to begin with, and this trip is costing so much in gas and lodging and food and so forth that they've done a little bit of their online work even on the trip just to keep it going. The bedding is actually kinda rough, and the air conditioner rattles, and the complimentary breakfast is stale muffins, cold cereal, and some fruit. Someone bangs on the wall when Sinclair lets out a particularly loud, plaintive moan, one of those gasping, whimpering sounds she makes when her back is arching and her lower body is starting to quiver.

And, all told, perhaps that's why they're so relaxed later. Why they drowse for awhile on the bed afterward, Sinclair rubbing his shoulders with one hand. Why Alex only lifts his head once to kiss her forehead, laying back down with a thwump on the pillow to try and catch his breath. Nothing really feels different, or out of place, or any more special than it always is.

Sinclair, at least, hops back into the shower quickly and out again, drying her hair so quickly that it's a bit wild and wavy rather than pin-straight down her back. She puts on shorts -- these ones don't go to her knee. These ones bare the viper around her thigh. She pulls on a plain white t-shirt with a v neck and some flip-flops and away they go, her feet up on the dash.

As they drive past the beaches, Alex can see her eyes scanning the people out there. The way she looks at humans sometimes, he remembers how he first saw her, how he first saw her looking at him. She's different. Any one of those people on the sand could look at her and feel it. She could walk among them and they'd cower, they'd nudge out of the way, because they'd wonder which one of them she was going to choose to eat. They would want to run, and they would know it would be helpless.

She looks at them with all that distance in her eyes. The endless gulf between what they are and what she is. For a Glass Walker, sometimes Sinclair is so very, very separated from humanity. There is no other way she could be, even if she wanted --

even if she wants

-- it to be otherwise.

There's more peace when they go out further into Florida's wild areas, and she's smiling again, lazy and happy. She wonders if there are gators out here. She bends over and marvels at little purple flowers growing from the water. She looks all around her and it's just water. Water everywhere. She puts her palm down on the surface as though she's communing with something beneath. The sun glints off of her ears, and off of the piercing through her arm that has no meaning and serves no purpose beyond a warning to mortals that she is more dangerous, that she is different, that she is something to be wary of.

The sun gleams off of her skin and her fair hair, and she asks herself why no one goes outside anymore, even in places like this.

Into another sort of wild, Sinclair drives slowly, the windows down, the music and a/c off, while Alex relaxes next to her. Glancing over when he asks his question she blinks slowly, then looks forward, quiet for a moment. He might think she didn't hear him, but she's thinking.

"I'm always a wolf," she begins, her tone quiet, but not soft. It rings with age, and with truth, though she is very young and she is a singer and not a lawgiver. Still: it rings. And the words hang in the air for awhile before she goes on, hovering in the sunlight like motes of dust.

"Sometimes after a moot, my pack comes together after the revel at the end and we're all in four-legged forms. Sometimes my Alpha stays in hispo for a long time, because he's the Ahroun, and even when he's given his rage to Gaia he's the strongest of us. His body and his spirit want to keep protecting us, all the time, so sometimes he stays bigger and more ferocious for a little longer than we do. It's like the way he harries us out of danger, guarding our backs.

"Katherine is this sleek white thing in lupus. She's lovely. So much of her madness seems to leave her in that form, and she has a little more peace to her. She's in touch with the moon then, and with her wisdom, as though the claws and the ability to scent anything she wants helps her shake off the unnameable fears brought about by her breeding. She's a calm center, though her rage is even greater than mine.

"We've had other packmates, but they seem to come and go. Even the best of them -- Sarita comes to mind, and Asha -- aren't quite the same to me as Lukas and Kate. I like being in lupus with them."

There's another pause, another quiet. She pulls over and slows the car to a stop, looking out around her. They aren't in any particular place. The glades make their sounds around them, and she listens a bit.

"In winter we sometimes sleep out by the shrine to our totem. We cluster together in fur. I curl up against Kate's side to feel her ribs move while she breathes. Lukas comes closer and lays his muzzle across our necks. We've laid like that so many times. Sarita wiggles a lot, she's got a restlessness in her blood. But with us she sometimes goes still. It's not easy for her to be close, but she is, with us. When Asha was alive she was pretty restless, too. Young. Hot, you know? In her blood. She'd dance around like her paws were on coals sometimes. She liked to play."

Sinclair closes her eyes for a moment, and it's not hard to see that for the first time in long months since Asha died -- and this may be the first mention Alex has ever heard that this packmate, who he mostly only knew as the other wolf who was there when Tripoli was saved, died while he and Sinclair were broken up -- her eyes are filling with hot tears. She sniffs, and takes a breath, blinking them away as she looks out at the green around them.

"I've never had that before. Not with any of the Walkers or Gnawers I knew when I earned my name. Not with Joey or Dietrich, that's for sure. I couldn't ever be... soft. The first time I laid down next to Kate as a wolf and she let me be so close to her, I was in shock. And Lukas gets so big and stupid and furry and protective and I'd never had that, either."

She exhales softly. "It's like... when you're sick as a little kid and your parents let you sleep with them til your fever breaks. Or just your mom putting her hand on your forehead. And it's like that, and it's also like the way we are when we fall asleep on the couch without meaning to. And it's like that, and it's also like wrestling and laughing on the floor, even when you're being still." Sinclair turns to look at him, then out at the glades again. "I'm always a wolf. But I'm most a wolf when I'm with my pack."

Alex

A little bit of that sadness comes back as he listens to her. He's never asked this before, and maybe to some degree he's never really wanted to know. Never really wanted to be reminded of that truth that took a long time to get over. That truth that can never quite be forgotten.

That she is not human. That she is nothing like those soft people on the beach, the ones whose muscles were built on machines, whose bodies were toned and tanned only by vanity. She's not really like Alexander, even. She's something wild, and primordial, and she can be so terrifying.

But it's not that he's scared of her. It's not that at all. It's when she starts talking about her packmates, the ones closest to her, the ones she flops all in a warm furry pile with, that Alex gets a little sad. He can't ever understand that; not fully. He can't ever take part in that. Even if her pack decided to come home with her, jump up on their bed, curl up all around them on a cold winter's night -- even if they did all that, and laid their heads on him as he slept, and guarded him while he rested, it wouldn't be the same.

He wouldn't feel the comfort. He might well feel the fear. She's always a wolf, she says. And he's not.

He turns to look at her, though, refusing to let that flicker of ache drive him away, into hiding, into whatever false shelter a glib answer or a barked laugh might bring. He looks at her as the sunlight bounces off her face and gilds her arms: this strong, golden, wild mate of his.

Quietly, "And what are you when you're with me?"

Sinclair

It's never come out in conversation before, not eloquently or without argument, that they are different creatures. They haven't simply sat down and come to terms with the fact that she is a different species, that she has a life so far different from his that only her pack can ever really sit with her like that and understand her exact experience, or imagine it clearly compared to their own. They haven't tried to discuss how to navigate that space between them.

But neither of them is unaware of it, or pretending it isn't there. They just seem to accept it, and get together anyway, and take time when they can't, and for two incredibly verbal and highly intelligent people, that seems to be working all the same.

So she looks to him after she speaks, turned sideways in the driver's seat now and laying the side of her head against the chair back. She looks down on him, as he lays there, and her eyes are still clinging brightly to remembered grief for a packsister she lost. She doesn't know his thoughts, but in a way she can sense them, and she thinks about telling him also that

Katherine has a man they all pretty much despise that she goes to after she walks away from her packmates, and he has leave to enter her bedroom and they do not. Lukas has a mate and when the moon is high or thin or the night is cold or hot he wants her, always her, he leaves them and goes to her even on those revel nights, because he would rather shift to his human skin and wrap himself around her than stay in a furry pile. Sarita is constantly wrapped up in her sister's affairs and Margaret has a kid that she pretends she's not always thinking about and Maddox still seems like he could up and leave at any moment, really, because that just seems to be his nature.

She wouldn't want them in the home she shares with Alex. She wouldn't want them to come with her and if they tromped into their bedroom she'd probably snarl and bite at them to leave. That if they flopped by Alex and brought him in close she'd nudge them off, all of them, wriggling in between until she was the one in contact with him. He is hers. Hers only. Their bed is hers and his and her pack has no place there. They have no right to hold him close the way she does. He is her mate. Hers. And their den is not a pack den. It is home, and that's a different thing.

But Sinclair doesn't get a chance to say all of that, or to let him know just yet. She doesn't smile when she says what she does, half-cocked or shy or even happy. She watches him, her eyes as soft as her voice, the word coming easily and quickly to her lips because it's the simplest and most basic truth:

"Yours."

That rings, too. Hovers in the air like her answer from before, that she's always a wolf. And she blinks slowly, watching him, adoring him in the quietest way.

"I'm yours even when I'm with them," Sinclair adds a moment later, hearing herself and reflecting on her own words even as she's saying them. She reaches out her hand across the center console and brushes the back of it against his arm, against the back of his hand, feeling his knuckles on her knuckles, the side of his hand against the side of hers, a plump and firm soft spot. "And as much as I want you there in all that warmth, at the same time it would drive me crazy to... share what we have with them like that. Expose it to them like they're a part of it, and... they're not."

She closes her eyes a moment, brushing her hand with his, feeling between his fingers with her own, memorizing by touch that small body part with all of its many, tiny bones. "When I'm curled up with them, I miss you," she whispers. "When I'm lying down with you, I don't miss anything."

Alex

The smile that flickers across Alex's face then is quick but real. His smiles are always real, even if the emotion behind them changes. Real pleasure. Real joy. Real viciousness, real aggression -- those smiles happen, too, and those are just as genuine as any other. There isn't a lot of duplicity in him.

Or her. It's one of many reasons they suit each other.

He opens his fingers, wraps his hand around hers. She speaks to him of another truth, one that few Garou ever want to admit. Pack is close, but mate is closer. Totem-pack is close, but family-pack is closer. It's only instinct, after all. Totem-packs were born of necessity and faith; a construct that comes with war. Family-packs are mandated by all that is instinct.

Lukas will always go to his mate, always, whenever he can, as much as he can. He will always keep a little den of his own with her, where even the closest of his pack are not allowed to stray. Sarita will always think about her sister no matter how far that mad young kinswoman strays, and worry about her even if she doesn't want to. Katherine has a man who is not quite a mate; moreso than that, she has an extended family just about as damaged and deranged and dangerous as they come, and they weigh on her like a stone. She will never be able to cast them off entirely, nor want to.

Blood is thicker than water, the humans say. This is not quite the same thing, but it's close.

Alex doesn't know most of this. If he knew, he'd think they were lucky, all things considered. That their bond, this bond that's deeper and stronger than even the bond of pack, is a source of strength. Is something that anchors them and fills them, and not something that threatens to destroy them.

"Let's go home after we're done here," he says. "I thought about going through Mexico, but ... let's just go home. I miss being home with you."

Sinclair

Sinclair loves his smiles. The soft, small ones he doesn't get very often unless he's alone with her, which show up occasionally without him realizing it and she holds her breath like if she grins he'll realize he's being tender where people might see it and lock it up again. And the flashing bright smiles of enjoyment as he manages to kick her ass at a video game, which happens ever so rarely that she doesn't do more than laugh with shared joy when he starts hollering and swearing in triumph. The way he is smiling even when he's losing, in a shock that won't go away that she's just so fast and it's not fair what the fuck this game just came out.

Those vicious, vengeful, aggressive smiles that make her wary when he's up against something he probably can't win against. Those same smiles that turn her on when he's up against something that deserves it. She's got so much violence in her. She loves the violence and vigor he has, even when he's wrong, even when he should run the fuck away, even when she wants him to run away. The way he smiles at her when she's on top of him and it's flickering over his face in between those tight pulls of muscle in his forehead, smiling in rapt enjoyment that flows and twines with aching need.

Sinclair is closer to him than anyone else. Closer to her family in some ways than to her pack, but for her they are so separate. She could relax around them in a way she couldn't with the Garou, but the same is true in reverse: she still will not show her family that face of hers that is the most dangerous, the most terrifying. She holds onto it, leashes it tightly when she's with them, because even after years spent as Kin, they did not grow up and find each other and know that their child might be -- should be -- a werewolf. And when they drove out of Kansas Sinclair was exhausted, would not have survived with her patience and sanity intact if Alex hadn't taken her away from them a couple of times. If he hadn't made love to her in the grass, if she hadn't escaped into the umbra to chase down Tripoli. Her family is her blood, and they know her history, and to a Galliard especially that means a lot. Her pack is her spirit, and they know where she comes from and where she is and where she is going even when they cannot be there with her, and she needs that like she needs to shift, to hunt, to run.

Alex is her mate. And his body and his mind and his heart are all closer to her own than any others'. She will never take another to be that close. She has never wanted another to be that close.

Sinclair smiles, a half thing, one corner of her mouth. "To tell you the truth, baby, I'm so sick of traveling I've seriously considered asking if you'd mind selling the car and we could just fly back." She laughs at that, leaning over and laying her head on his shoulder, contorting in the cabin to do so, not caring. She smells him, breathing in deep. "I wanna be home with you, too."

Alex

Something pleasantly odd for him to think about, that Alex is even now just getting used to: his mate is proud of him. It's not just that she's in love with him, or loves him, or cares for him, or wants to be his. It's that she's proud of him, and that's something he's startlingly new to. One might argue he almost does his best not to live up to expectations; does his best to throw what gifts he has back in the teeth of society. Took his rather impressive intellect and spent -- some would say squandered -- it on two nearly useless majors. Didn't make a living out of either of them; earns his living with his fists instead. Did his best to piss people off for years, and even now it's a valid defense mechanism for him. Maybe it always was.

The point is: Alex isn't really the type of person that excels in ways that make others proud. But Sinclair is proud of him -- told him so, shows him so -- and not just when he gets it right or tries or whatever, but just...

all the time. She's proud he's her mate. She's told him that, too.

He kisses the top of her head as she lays her head on his shoulder. All in all, their driving is a little haphazard right now, a little dangerous, but neither of them care. It's ... Tuesday, or Thursday, or something; some weekday, they've lost count days ago -- and the roads all the way out in the Everglades are free and clear. They take a little time to be close, and they agree that, yes.

Yes, it's time to go home.

But not quite yet. They have another stop to make, and so when they're done roaming the Everglades -- when their pants are rolled up to their knees and they've waded in muck and silt and brackish water, when they've watched wading birds and waterfowl and one meditative, slow-pacing heron skim across the surface of the wetlands, they turn back toward the city. It's late afternoon by the clock, but well in the middle of the day by the summer sun. Plenty of time, as it were, to hang out with Alex's parents.

And with Alex behind the wheel again they wind into the Miami suburbs, which are startlingly like the San Diego 'burbs. Houses in shades of pink and peach and cream and tan, stuccoed, tile-roofed, similar or downright identical, sprawled in huge developments. Older neighborhoods are four-square. Newer ones -- based on the common assumption that curvy road = rich people -- are based off of more interesting roadmaps.

Mr. and Mrs. Vaughn live in one of those curvy-road neighborhoods. Pembroke Pines, the neighborhood's called, and it's a modest one: comfortably middle-classed, but no one would call it anything more than that. The houses are low but sprawling. There are palm trees everywhere, and few trees otherwise. The grass looks parched. The yards are large, and there aren't a lot of fences. Alex pulls to a stop where 8th St curves into 68th Terrace, kills the engine, and takes his sunglasses off.

"If there are brownies with maraschino cherries on top," he advises, "don't eat 'em. Those are the really loaded ones."

Sinclair

There isn't a lot to Sinclair that is devious, or deviant, or underhanded. She's one of the worst liars Alex has probably ever met, and some of that is unwillingness to tell untruths, and some of that is sheer inability to deceive. She's not even that charming when she's actively trying to be. Getting better, but socially, sometimes she's just tickled pink that Alex likes her just the way she is, even likes that she's not that charismatic, likes that her skills as a Galliard aren't in epic tales or songs and howls or interpretive dance but just... telling the truth. Telling it sometimes with facts, and sometimes with heart.

It makes her happy -- and proud of herself, too -- that Alex, who didn't want anyone at all, even her at first, picked her. That he was willing to go to his brother, that his brother didn't even need to ask if Alex was on board with this, that he wanted to be with Sinclair. And be part of her family, and bring her into his. It makes her very, very happy, in fact.

She nuzzles his chest, closing her eyes as he kisses that spot on her forehead where his lips seem magnetized toward. The keys are still in the ignition but the car is quiet since she pulled over, and when she breathes in his scent again, he can hear it, and feel her breath tickling his neck when she exhales.

One more nuzzle. One more kiss, this time to the side of his neck, and she straightens up and turns the engine over again to find someplace where it's reasonably safe to get out and tromp around.

Out in the keys, the very hems of Sinclair's shorts got wet, and then dried again. They get wet in the glades again, and she's thinking maybe she should have brought another pair, but the truth is, if she were that worried about the impression she's making, she wouldn't be wearing the shorts that expose a tattoo whose meaning is wrapped up in one of the worst moments of her life, one of the worst mistakes. But this is Sinclair; Sinclair is not a liar.

Sitting on the back of the Elantra, she uses wet wipes from a plastic tub to scrub some of the Ick off of her long legs, thinking about the herons they saw flying, and the copious bugs who craved her hot, strong blood too much for fear to drive them off. Birds and snakes and every other living creature in these areas swish away until the glades are almost silent around them; the only animals that do not fear Sinclair seem to be other large, mammalian predators -- and those see her as a threat and are liable to attack -- and bugs. Bugs just do not give a single fuck, she says, and swears right there never ever ever in her life to ever fucking follow a fucking bug totem I swear to go--

Alex is staring at her about then and she gets a screwed-up expression of consternation and frustration. "Cockroach is different," she huffs finally, "but I will never worship at a shrine to Mosquito."

He's just laughing at her.

In the car, Sinclair puts on some chocolate-flavored chapstick that actually gives her lips a soft brownish tint, which Alex thinks is going to be gross til he actually sees it on her, to which she says, and that's why you're a boy, which he scoffs at, retorting that no, my dick has nothing to do with that. She just mwahs her lips a few times and grins. My lips smell like pudding, she says, quite pleased.

She tries to fix what the humidity has done to her hair. It's pretty useless. She shrugs and gives up, and looks out the window as they start to enter his parents' neighborhood. He can feel her interest perk, see it in her body language like an animal scenting something -- other than chocolate pudding. She thinks that this is sort of like her parents' house, only Florida-style instead of Kansas-style and the houses are all newer and there are actually various kinds of greenery because it's not Kansas. Maybe nicer.

Well. Partly because of how new and how large and the trees, definitely nicer.

But right now, she's not making that comparison in her head for very long. She's realizing that Alex is stopping the car and she wiggles her toes in her flipflops, turning to look at him. She ignores the comment about the brownies, because regardless of the amount of ganja in the dessert, she can metabolize it in a literal second if she wants to. What Sinclair says is:

"How normal is your mom?" she wants to know, a look of sudden and quite unexpected vulnerability filling those fair eyes of hers.

Alex

Alex has already opened the door. He'd turned the air back on when they left the Everglades, but they lose their nice little bubble of AC'd air fast. Heat and humidity pours in as he turns to look at Sinclair.

"Normal enough not to think hash brownies are an appropriate way of greeting your son's bride-to-be," he says, wry, "but if you're worried that she'll be put off by you -- well. She's [i]un[/i]normal enough not to have divorced the guy baking the brownies." He grins. He looks three shades darker than he was even this morning, tanned by their outing; his teeth are practically fluorescent. "C'mon. Don't worry. My parents are cool and they're gonna love you."

He jumps out of the car, then, grabbing his essentials backpack out of the trunk as he circles around. Meets Sinclair on the curb, holding his hand out to her. By the time they're halfway up the sidewalk, they can hear the tumblers turning as someone unlocks the front door. And by the time Alex reaches out to pull the screen door open, the front door is opening as well.

It's Alex's dad at the door. Father and son explode into a sort of mutual [i]hey![/i]ing and [i]you made it!/we did![/i]ing, and Sinclair can see where Alex and his brother got their totally-manly-totally-straight-really-srsly hugs from, because it plays out in front of her again, only this time, Mr. Vaughn pounds his son's back harder than the vice versa. When he finally lets go, he sticks his hand out at Sinclair, but if she takes it Sinclair finds herself enveloped in the same sort of hug an eyeblink later: squeezed and back-thumped.

"It is a pleasure," he says emphatically when their front porch hugs are done, escorting the two into the house, "to finally meet you, Sinclair. I'm Greg, and I just bet you can guess my relationship to Alex."

There's no question that this is Alex's father. They have the same build, medium height and stocky, and the same dark brown hair. On Vaughn the Elder, that hairline is losing ground and that build has started to run a little toward a bit of spare flesh around the middle. The attitude's there in some manifestation or other, too. It's uncertain where Aaron got his introversion from.

Inside, the house is distinctly ranch-style -- long and low, big windows that drop almost to the floor, open expanses and plenty of light. The walls and carpet are simple, neutral colors. Despite that, the living room, large as it is, feels cluttered: there's just a lot of living paraphernalia there. Sofa, couches, coffee table strewn with munchies, remote controls, magazines, newspapers, a recliner, a home gym, a yoga mat rolled up in the corner. The floorplan opens into a similarly large kitchen, where Aaron appears to be cooking (he waves; he looks a little frantic), a family room; somewhere around the corner are the bedrooms.

"Anyway," Greg is leading them into the house, bypassing the living room to head straight for the family room: even more cluttered, homey with its colorful-dreadful throw pillows and floor cushions, its Wii and its Xbox (previous generation; likely an Alex cast-off), its collection of board games over on the corner shelf, "Alex's mom is still at work. She'll be back in another half-hour or so. Aaron's making a turkey casserole so we don't get yelled at for starving you. Are you kids staying the night? Aaron's room is the guest room now and Ellen turned Alex's into her office, but his little bed is still in there. So you can stay in either, if you want. -- Hey Aaron!"

Aaron, sounding harried: "Yeah Dad?"

"Where'd my brownies go?"

"I put 'em in the family room. They should be right there."

"I'm going blind," Greg laughs, and picks up the platter, extending them toward Alex and Sinclair. They've all got red cherries on top, which inspires a Look from Alex.

"Seriously, Dad?" he says, and picks the smallest wedge he can find.

Sinclair

"But --" Sinclair is saying, that face of hers obviously still quite concerned even as Alex is all but hustling her out of the car. She flaps her hands and doesn't bother grabbing anything, finger-combing her hair and shoving the passenger door shut. He wasn't this nervous when he walked into her parents' house, she's rather sure of it. Sinclair walks next to him, but half a step behind, holding his hand. It isn't submission, or even really shyness. There's more she's knotting up inside over than whether or not Mr. and Mrs. Vaughn like her. Or love her.

All the same, she's smiling when the front door opens and the screen swings inward to let Male Vaughn the Eldest greet them. Her eyes are unblinking, a smile on her face that all but makes her look like a kewpie doll. She hangs back a bit as they hug and smack each other around, then has a firm hand shoved towards her. She blinks finally and takes it

only to get hauled against an unfamiliar body, her back repeatedly thumped upon. She stares wide-eyed at Alex over his father's shoulder as though to say what the actual fuck?, but it's likely that even 'Greg' can feel that awkwardness in her, that unfamiliarity.

Worse, and what sobers Sinclair inside quite a bit, is that he can also probably feel that instinctive burst of fear in response to her tension. Even if most of her tension is awkwardness, uncertainty, just not knowing these people, she's not like a human. Or a kin. She's not even like most Garou -- certainly not many Glass Walkers roaming this city. Even Alex is still learning to tell the difference between Sinclair is afraid and hurt and doesn't know what to do and Sinclair is going to pin me to the wall by my throat and rip my face off.

She's biting the corner of her lower lip when Greg releases her from that squeeze, but he doesn't look shaken by her, not pale. She relaxes a touch, and huffs a laugh. "Um, yeah." There isn't much more to say to that, though -- he knows her name, and he knows her relationship to Alex. And it doesn't matter much anyway -- they're getting escorted into the house where she can smell Alex's brother. And that's the truth of the matter. She's in a bit of sensory overload, rushing from car to door to being embraced to suddenly in the house with family and smells and the Garou she just took a Kin away from. There isn't much time to process any of it, even in the minute or two it really is.

So she doesn't say much as they pass through the living room, looking around. Her eyes linger on Aaron when they see the kitchen, her eyebrows hopping up at how frazzled he looks. In the family room she spots the fugly pillows and lifts her eyebrows at Alex, giving him a Look.

Greg is talking again, seemingly a mile a minute for Sinclair. A couple of times she opens her mouth to interject, but then there's a new topic, and then another, and she doesn't quite know if they're staying or not, because Alex seems to have packed an essentials backpack and this is the first she's hearing of it, and then:

brownies.

All with cherries.

Sinclair just laughs again like before, at Alex picking up a tiny piece. Greg offers it to her and she grins. "I think I'll wait. Don't want to ruin my dinner, after all." A beat. "Shouldn't we be helping Aaron?"

Alex

Alex can sense Sinclair's tension and surprise, even if Greg doesn't seem to. He walks into the house beside his girlfriend-fiancee-mate-girl, his hand finding hers, a half-step behind his dad. Later, when he's picked up the smallest piece of dessert he can find, he's still holding her hand -- the snack in his left hand.

"Nah, he's all right," Greg says to Sinclair's question. "He doesn't get a chance to come home too often, and he likes it when he can cook for us or mow the lawn or something. I think it makes him feel like he's still connected to us."

It's perhaps a startling insight from the same man who greeted his son and his future daughter-in-law with spine-bending back pounds and special brownies.

"If you want to go say hi, though," he adds, breaking off a modest piece of brownie for himself, "I think he'll like that. Aaron had a lot of good things to say about you."

Sinclair

Maybe Greg is already high. Sinclair wonders, though she didn't smell anything on him. Then again, if he likes edibles...

She tips her head to the side, a sharp and animalistic gesture that Alex, at least, knows doesn't mean she's thinking about eating someone's face. But it looks like that for a moment, sudden and canine. She glances back at the kitchen, thinking of the fact that Aaron looked frazzled, and not sure if she should be uncomfortable or not with Greg telling her how Aaron feels about all this. He seemed more reserved. More private. And she's not sure, now.

"Oh," she says with a hint of surprise, when Greg tells her he heard good things from Aaron. She wishes now she'd asked Alex what his family already knew about her. She wishes now Alex had waited in the car for her to have her freakout over meeting his family. She is holding onto his hand a little tighter, perhaps, than strictly necessary. "I think I will." A beat. "Nothing against you!" she also blurts, looking at Greg. "Just. I feel bad he's in there by himself."

Another pause. "I'd really like to see Alex high off his ass later, okay?" she tells Greg, and flashes a grin. It's possible Greg can tell she's nervous. It's even more likely that only Alex can. She semi-reluctantly withdraws her hand from Alex after a squeeze, and back-tracks towards the kitchen, smelling poultry.

Alex

Alex's hand follows hers for a ways, falling away only after that squeeze. He turns back to his dad as Sinclair heads for the kitchen. She can hear the two of them start a conversation about that thing mom was gonna try to do with the backyard.

The kitchen opens directly from the dining room, which in turn opens into the living and family rooms. It's easy enough for Sinclair to get in there. The room is hot, the filters are going, and Aaron is sauteing vegetables in a pan while the oven preheats. Off to the side is a casserole pan; there's a pot of wild rice cooking on the back burner, and some cream-of-something-or-other soup waiting to be mixed in.

"Hey," he says, glancing at her over his shoulder as she comes in. "Can you take the rice off the heat for me? Thanks!"

Sinclair

Sinclair is taking a hairband off her wrist and pulling it all up into a ponytail as she's walking to the kitchen, her flipflops announcing her even before he could smell her through the vegetables and rice and everything else. She nods at Aaron and moves the pan off to another -- cold -- burner, shaking her head. "I can't believe you're making a casserole in the middle of summer," she says, "on top of brownies. Surprised you haven't melted," she adds, and goes about looking for some PAM to grease the casserole pan with.

That tension she carried from car to kitchen seems to have abated a little. Bizarrely. But there it is; and she starts cooking alongside Aaron, asking him what still needs to be done and doing it quite simply, like she's made turkey casserole a hundred trimes. Which she has, actually.

Alex

Aaron casts her a sheepish, sidelong look. "It's about all I know how to make. Well, this and ramen."

They work together for a while in something like a companionable silence. It's not really silence -- they ask each other to pass utensils, ask what to do with this or that, ask if this is ready to go in yet or if they should wait. The pan gets greased. The rice gets put in, and the veggies, and it turns out the turkey's just a preroasted turkey breast from the local Costco, which -- when all the rest of the burners are off and the oven's just about ready -- Aaron shreds by hand.

It gives them the first real break they've had since Sinclair came into the kitchen. Aaron faces her over the kitchen island, looking jarringly like and unlike his brother with his young face, his smiling hazel eyes.

"Did my dad freak you out a little when you came in?" he asks; there isn't a shred of mockery in it.

Sinclair

Her eyes flick over to him when he mentions ramen. The corner of her mouth curls in a slow smile. "Ramen can be awesome when you do it right," she says, going back to work, spraying the casserole dish over the sink so oil doesn't go everywhere.

Sinclair helps him shred turkey breast. They both do it with a thoughtless savagery, but so would any cook. What gives it the edge that would make most people wary is that they're monsters. She wears it more clearly; where Aaron has a calm, still heart, Sinclair's seems to pulse a vicious and hungry red all the time. Some people can meet him and not know what he is, not know why they feel a little uneasy if he gets a certain look in his eyes, but he doesn't get that look very often. No one who meets Sinclair misses the truth under the surface: she's wild. She's wild, and she's snarling, and she's the top of the food chain.

They should, when the casserole goes in the oven, go out and be sociable. But Sinclair washes her hands slowly, picking turkey out from under her nails, and leans her back against the edge of the sink while she dries them with a waffled kitchen towel.

She looks up and over at Aaron when he asks her that, her eyebrows lifting ever so slightly. After a moment she shakes her head. "No, not really. I sort of expected him to be exuberant and friendly and all that. And my packmate sells pot and another packmate is always bumming it off of her to feed spirits with, so that's not weird, either. I just... don't really know what anyone here already has in their head about me. Alex really doesn't talk much about hi-- your parents, or about Miami in general."

Her eyes drift down to her fingers, checking her nails again. "I'm just not sure how to act. It's not like we can all just go on a hunt or something and then boom, we're all bonded and stuff."

It isn't hard to tell, from her tone, that she certainly wishes they could. Not just because it would be the 'easy' way. But because, for her, that is the most natural way. The one she knows. The way that she understands.

Alex

"Not to state the obvious," Aaron says, "but I think maybe you should just be yourself."

He's finishing up with the turkey, ripping the almost-picked-clean ribcage in half. He's a quiet, calm point in his boisterous household, but there's an effortless savagery in that one motion, that one instant. He offers half to Sinclair, keeps half for himself, and there's a sense that no matter how they gather over dinner or brownies or whatever later, this, right here, is the true sharing-of-the-kill between wolves.

"Alex didn't really tell us much about you, so there's nothing you have to live up to." He pauses to nibble shreds of meat from between the ribs. "Not that he was holding back, but you know him. He'd just say unhelpful things like 'she's awesome' and 'you should meet her' and 'I'm crazy about her'. And even if he had given us a complete dossier and biography on you ... there's still nothing you should feel pressured to live up to. Alex loves you, and I already like you, for who you are. So just keep acting like you and it'll be all right."

Sinclair

He states the obvious and gets a quirked brow and a wry half-smirk from Sinclair for it, a look that fades easily and naturally in the moments before he hands her half the rib of a bird cooked for the sake of human digestion. She picks meat off of the ribcage as he talks, her thoughts to herself and her eyes on the way the white, just-dry-enough flesh peels off of the bone. This, she can understand. This, too, is what she needed to know. That Aaron was, for lack of a better word, okay.

She needed a quiet point in a boisterous household, too. And that surprises her a little.

She needed an in-law who could understand, without needing it explained or translated or adjusted, what she is. Someone -- other than Alex, who understands anyway, who strives to understand anyway -- who feels like they're on her side. And she didn't know entirely if he was or not. Now, with good-for-eating but not-good-for-casseroling meat in her hands, she feels it.

Sinclair licks the side of her thumb thoughtfully. She gives a faint, silent laugh at Alex's unhelpful way of describing her to his family. "For what it's worth, it's not really about worrying about being 'judged' or living up to something or worrying that they're not going to like me. I mean, that's kind of on the table for me, because it just is, but I'm just not good at this kind of thing. Getting to know new people like this."

Like this. Not ripping apart a turkey or harrying a wyrmhound. Not fighting. They're not Alex, they're not in her face giving her something to react to. She's such a creature of conflict outside of her own pack, her own family. Hell. Even within her own pack. And she doesn't want conflict with Alex's family. She doesn't want to fight with them.

She puts the ribs to her mouth and bites off some of the meat, scraping the bone with her teeth to get a couple of particularly moist morsels off. Licking her lips, she lowers it back to the plate and looks at Aaron. "Are you okay?"

Alex

She's just not good at this kind of thing, Sinclair says. And Aaron looks at her with sympathy, though not pity, and says -- simply and quietly -- "I know."

He lowers his half of the turkey rack to the cutting board, pulling off bits of meat with precise, fluid nips of his fingertips. "I think maybe my parents know too," he adds. "Or at least planned for the eventuality. I think maybe my dad's hoping you two can get stoned and philosophize about how Gaia really is the Force or something." A quick, faint flicker of a smile. "And my mom might try to drag you to her yoga class tomorrow or something, I don't know.

"Just relax. I know you're not just worried about being judged, but just in case it needs to be said ... they're not going to judge you for not being good at this, either. I don't think anyone's 'good' at the whole meeting-the-parents thing."

A pause. A shift of topics. Aaron looks a little taken off-guard, blinking once before his eyes drop. He pulls at a few scraps of meat. Eats them, sucking shreds of poultry off his fingertips. Looks at Sinclair again, and doesn't try to blow it off, and doesn't pretend not to know why he might not be okay.

"I'm fine. I'm good." His smile is a little lopsided. "Thanks for asking, though."

Sinclair

The farther they get away from that dream where they grew up thinking they were human, the higher they ascend in rank, the harder it gets. Come home and make a casserole, mow the lawn, try to remember what it felt like to have all of this matter, try to maintain that piece of yourself that belongs there. Greg said that and Sinclair, who doesn't even talk about that feeling with Alex much, was taken aback at how he just laid it out there -- something that for her is private, if not shameful. Painful. Then again, she wondered if maybe that was why he said it. She doesn't know if he could realize just how hard it gets as time goes on to try and go home.

I know, Aaron says, and she's not sure if it's just because that's how obvious it is with her, or if it's because he's been there. She quirks a brow at what he thinks his father's plan might be, then looks vaguely horrified at the idea of being dragged to yoga class. It would be the least relaxed yoga class any of those women have ever had.

"She tries, and I'm making her go to a kickboxing beginner's class instead," Sinclair says in warning.

"Alex was awesome at the whole meeting-the-parents-thing," Sinclair declares a moment or two later, even after Aaron has answered her question, because at least from her perspective, it's entirely true. She wipes off her hands again, reaching up to take her hair down. It's still frizzy with humidity, but she doesn't seem to mind or care. She looks at him again, closely, but she doesn't try to pick apart his heart from across the kitchen island.

"My packmate Katherine -- her older brother is Garou, too. But he's not in our pack. He's... her family pack, though," she says, and somehow that seems like a whole other question for Aaron, related and unrelated at once to the last one she asked him.

Alex

"Oh, she goes to kickboxing class too," Aaron says, entirely without irony. The irony comes a little later, when she says Alex was awesome. That makes Aaron shake his head once, saying, "Maybe it's more accurate to say, no one ever feels like they're good at meeting the parents. Anyway," the smile comes back, "it's not like you're doing badly."

He finishes up with his half of the turkey rack, tossing the remainder -- nothing but bones now, really -- into the trash. Then he picks up a big mixing spoon and goes about stirring cream-of-mushroom soup into the turkey-rice-vegetable pile. When she mentions Katherine, he looks at her, curious, not quite getting it.

"What are you getting at?"

Sinclair

"I mean that... I want you to be my family-pack," Sinclair says, and though there's a point where she hesitates, it isn't because she's struggling to find the words she means. She knows exactly what she means, even if the thought didn't quite occur to her til a few moments ago. "I'm not going to take Alex away from his family-pack. But I can't share him with another pack, either. So... this has to be my family-pack, too. And you're the wolf in it. So you have to want it, too."

Alex

The smile that crosses Aaron's face is quick and genuine, a flit of brightness over his thoughtful intellectual's features. "I'd like that," he says quietly. "I'd like it if I could consider you family. Not just because of law and custom, but because you are."

Sinclair

It's so strange to look at Aaron's face and think of his eyes as thoughtful, the shape of his mouth as pensive, the furrow in his brow as intellectual. Those same eyes in Alex's face are full of fire and sunlight and reaction. The shape of Alex's mouth is -- well, to Sinclair, something entirely different. When his brow wrinkles, he's often thinking, and sometimes it's to work something out and sometimes it's because he's about to start yelling. Or hitting. It's the same face between the two of them. And it isn't. It isn't at all.

Sinclair laughs. It's no silent huff this time, but a quick moment of brightness. She doesn't have to say anything else to that, or doesn't need to, other than: "Okay, but I've never had a brother before, so I may need tips." She glances over at the doorway, towards the sound of Greg and Alex's voices, then back to Aaron. She gestures with a jerk of her head, questioning.

Alex

"Well. I've never had a sister before, so I think we're on level footing there." He pulls the oven door open. Heat pours out. Quick and deft, Aaron slides the casserole pan in, shuts the door, and wipes his hands on a rag. When Sinclair asks with a gesture, he nods. "Let's go see what they're up to."

What Alex and Greg are up to, it turns out, is inspecting the backyard. It's big and flat, as are most backyards in this area. A small concrete patio provides enough room for a barbecue grill and a few lounge chairs; arid, sunbaked grass covers the rest of the space. There are a few palms in the corner, just about the only trees that can survive this sort of climate.

Alex comes to Sinclair as she comes out, wrapping his arm around her waist and smooching her cheek. "My dad was telling me how he and mom are thinking of putting a swimming pool in," he says. "I told him if he did, we'd probably visit more often."

"I just put the casserole in," Aaron tells his father. "Should be done by the time mom gets back. She's still going to Bevmo to grab some beer and margaritas, right?"

"My mom," Alex says, happy, relaxed, his arm a warm weight around Sinclair's waist, "also makes the best seven-layer taco dip in the world."

Sinclair

"I've never had either, I still win," says the creature of conflict, the cheerleader of war, darting out of the way of the oven as though the heat coiling out will somehow dissolve her where she stands.

They tromp out of the kitchen a few seconds later, searching for Alex and Greg. Sinclair grabs a brownie from the platter when they pass through the living room, eating the cherry off the top first. She's encircled as soon as she gets out into the heat that makes the oven seem cool, and rearranges herself so that Alex's chest is against her back. Sooner or later if they stand like this then the front of his shirt and the back of hers will soak through with sweat, but she doesn't seem to care.

"I certainly would," she agrees, as though bringing Alex would be an afterthought. She looks over at Greg. "One of my packmates expanded her indoor pool to almost Olympic size after a puppy-eyes campaign by me and our Alpha. We swim a lot."

She doesn't mention that swimming was one of her top three sports in high school, or that it was the one she got a scholarship for at UCSD. She doesn't mention that because for awhile there she thought that maybe she could go the Olympic route. That she could make a career out of athletics, short as it might be. That she could have blown Michael Phelps out of the water. Sinclair doesn't really think much about the would-haves and the could-haves anymore, though.

"Seven-layer taco dip, margaritas, turkey casserole, and hash brownies," Sinclair muses, then gives a little nod. "Of course. Totally makes sense as a menu." She takes a bite of the brownie in her hand, chews, swallows. "We are gonna have the taco dip, right?"

Alex

"Yeah, Mom made it this morning before work." It's Aaron who answers her, smiling. "It's chilling in the fridge."

"Overachiever," Greg says, mock-resentful. "She's always up doing something at the crack of dawn. I don't know what happened to her. She wasn't so driven when I married her."

"The way Mom tells it," the twin at Sinclair's back puts in, "you weren't such a stoner-slacker when she married you."

"Maybe I won't build that pool after all," Greg says to Sinclair, grinning. "I'm not sure I want this rude ingrate coming over all the time."

Sinclair

Were she to close her eyes, and were she human, Sinclair would have trouble telling the three male voices apart. One is a little older, rougher around the edges with wear and tear but softened by a total collapse of stiffness in his demeanor. One is a little slower, a little lower, has a bit of a gentle smile behind it. She can almost hear a kid in there who didn't talk much because not a lot of people were listening. Then there's this vibrant, electric-heat voice that is somehow like a weapon, a blunt force and a sharp slash and a hot kiss all at once, and she doesn't close her eyes, but she moves herself back a little closer to the source of that voice, rubbing the back of her head gently on his shoulder in a sort of half-nuzzle.

"I can always leave him at home when I visit," Sinclair tells Greg, a laugh in her voice.

Alex

"Like hell you will," says the solid, warm source-of-voice behind her, laughing. "We have our own pool anyway. Did Aaron show you the pics I sent him of our place?" Greg shakes his head no; Alex unwinds one arm from around Sinclair to dig his phone out of his back pocket, swiping left and right and tapping and swiping again before turning it around to show his dad.

"We're like a block and a half from the beach. It's awesome. There's this great mexican joint down the road too, Surf Taco. Looks a little like it might give you dysentery, but they've got the best burrito bowls ever so it's totally worth it."

He does not tell his dad -- or his brother -- about what happened one night walking home from that place. It's a fact of life, these little lies of omission one practices even with -- sometimes especially with -- loved ones.

Sinclair

Alex lets go of her, and Sinclair catches Greg and Aaron's eyes while Alex is digging through his phone. She holds up her fingers for air-quotes and mouths our own pool at them, shaking her head with a wide-eyed look of mock horror at this whole business of the apartment complex pool compared to, say, the one at Kate's Loft.

Innocently, she settles back against Alex when he hands the phone over to his dad, calmly replacing his arms around her middle and adds: "It totally does not give you dysentery, it's just how that part of San Diego is. I think Alex also likes it because they water down their magaritas."

Alex

That makes Greg laugh. Uproariously, one might even say, his hand coming down for another meaty thump on the back. Seeing as how Sinclair's currently got hers against Alex, it's Alex that gets the smack, grunting an ow? under his breath as it hits.

"Let's go back in," Greg says. "Too damn hot out here, and just because the margaritas aren't here yet doesn't mean we can't get started on the dip."

Sinclair

"Jesus, even I felt that," Sinclair says after Greg's thwack to his son's back, but she's laughing, and she's also turning her head and nuzzling under Alex's jaw, kissing his cheek once and quickly. That physical affection came after she left the kitchen where she talked with Aaron. Before she was clinging to his hand and hanging back, not saying a word, hardly engaging. It's different now, and he can feel it and see it in how easily she relaxes into him, how freely she displays all of the glomps she has in her to give him.

All the glomps. Many many glomps.

"Brilliant," Sinclair says, and disentangles from her boyfriend again so that they can walk. She starts eating her brownie again, and picks up another when they head inside to eat taco dip.

Alex

They end up walking in semi-single-file, seeing as how the sliding door's open as minimally as possible to prevent dry, air-conditioned air from escaping. As Sinclair picks up another brownie, Aaron murmurs to her, "Alex told you those things are toxic if they have a cherry on top, right?"

-- and then they're back in the family room, and Greg is slamming the sliding door soundly shut and kicking the mat back into place. "When the boys were kids," he says, completely unaware of what irony it is to suggest those no-longer-kids he speaks of are still boys, "they used to track mud all over the house after every single rainstorm. Which, this being Florida, was like every other week. Ellen used to joke it was like having a dog without having a dog."

"And now we do have a dog," Aaron quips.

Alex frowns. "Aw, don't say that about yourself."

"Actually," Aaron's smile goes ear to ear as Alex walks right into it, "I was talking about you."

"Oh, funny. You ass."

And so it goes for a while. Greg gets the dip out of the fridge -- an enormous amount of it -- seven layers of cheese and guac and sour cream and salsa and rice and beans and taco meat all in the sort of glass ovenware most people bake cakes in. Aaron finds some tortilla chips in the pantry while Alex figures out a way to output his phone to the TV, and they go sit in front of it crunching on chips'n'dip while Alex flicks them through cell phone pics of San Diego, of Kansas, of the Keys and the Everglades and all the places they went to in between. All their smiling, sunburnt faces. All the great wide expanses of road between here and there and there and there. Greg is insatiably curious about everything and everywhere; Aaron is quiet, interested, and asks questions mostly about the people. Points out how happy they look, more than once.

They're all quite frankly getting a little full on tortillas and dip when the oven timer goes off and Aaron jumps up to get the casserole. He's pulling on oven mitts when the garage door starts to rumble open.

Sinclair

"Live a little, Nightfall," Sinclair murmurs back, pushing the edge of the brownie into her mouth as she tromps inside with them.

Her face gets a little confused when Aaron quips that they have a dog, because she hasn't smelled on, but then Alex -- and then Aaron -- and then Alex again, and she brushes brownie crumbs off her hands and goes after Greg to get chips and a monster pile of goo-dip before 'the boy's get to it. She finds cups and pours herself some water, since it is very hot and she did just eat two massive brownies and plunks herself into the middle seat on the couch so that she has prime access to the food on the coffee table.

"You do realize most people consider this sort of thing to be punishment, right?" she asks Alex when he starts flicking through photos of their apartment, their city in California, and their trek from There to Here. There is a photo of her just barely waking up in a sleeping bag and she too-quickly swallows a laden chip in order to cough out: "Oh, you dick."

"That's my mom and dad," she points out, when Ken and Samantha show up on screen. Samantha is mid-laugh, holding some lemonade, and Ken is raising his eyebrows at the camera but good-naturedly toasting with his beer. It's a good photo of them. She talks to Greg and Aaron about them a little -- what her dad does for a living, what her mom does. That's her old middle school. There's pictures in there of Sinclair in one or more bikinis, which puts on display almost every modification she's made to her body. The scarfication, even the tattoo on her hip, the full form of the one they can mostly see even now on her thigh.

There are close-ups of them at sunsets, because there was no one else around to take photos and they held the camera out to catch both their faces. In one of them she has her teeth set lightly in Alex's jaw, her saltwater-wet hair tied up in a very messy, disheveled bun, her earrings glinting, the collars of their wetsuits just barely visible. Alex looking, as Aaron says, really happy.

The garage door rumbles, and Sinclair gives the faintest little jump, turning her head over her shoulder. "Shit, it's the cops!" she exclaims. "Quick, eat all the brownies. Gogogo!"

Alex

Perhaps Sinclair isn't too surprised that Greg's the one to pretend to do exactly that: goodnaturedly picking up the entire plate and lifting it toward his wide-open mouth like he might just chute 'em all in. Alex, meanwhile, pops that one tiny piece he's had beginning to end in his mouth and munches it. Full-mouthed, he says, "You laugh, but you'll wish you did when she gives you the guilt-torpedo on how drugs are ruining our promising youth. She's part of a lobbyist group for public health or something, makes all these trips to DC. She takes that shit serious."

"To which I say," Greg opines, helping himself to one of the brownies after all, "if she knows so much about public health, then she ought to know the marvelous marijuana plant is not a drug but an herb, and quite medicinal. Probably way better for you than all those organic-acai-pomegranate-wheatgrass shakes she keeps drinking."

"I," Alex says, dusting off his hands, "and not taking sides in this one. I like not being caught in crossfire." He starts toward the garage; veers to a stop and grabs one more dip-laden chip, then holds his hand out for Sinclair's.

"C'mon, let's go say hi."

Sinclair

"Acai is bullshit but wheatgrass is amazing," says Sinclair, smiling happily at Greg. She stops then and goes: "Hey! Maybe I should be a Philodox!"

Alex's hand is in front of her face. She smacks her palm down on his and lets him give her some ballast to haul herself up off the couch, darting forward and nomfing the chip out of his hand. There is a touch of guac on her lip afterwards.

"Okay," she says, very seriously. "I'm ready."

Alex

Alex pauses to look at her. "Oh god, you are so high already."

He grabs another chip. He likes that shit. He's munching it as he goes toward the garage, and they can hear the door rolling down now, rattling and noisy, and there are high heels clicking toward the door and Alex throws it open and bellows HI MOM and it turns out she's on a bluetooth headset and she's saying I'm going to have to call you back. Okay? Okay. before killing the call and throwing open her arms.

"Alex!" Big tight hug there. Then, extending both hands to Sinclair, "And you must be Heather."

Ellen's on neat, classy three-inch heels. She's wearing a tailored pantsuit in a color likely described as cappuccino or mocha. Her hair is stylish and layered and bobbed and she, frankly, Looks Like A Glass Walker.

Sinclair

Traditional Glass Walkers -- that is, most of the ones in Aaron's sept -- strike a nerve in Sinclair on sight. The way they almost look plastic. The sharp suits, the moneyclips, the chrome, the newness and shine to everything about them. The cybernetic implants don't help, when she sees them. She comes from ancient stock, she feels it, as much as she feels a connection to Cockroach. But she also knows this nerve wouldn't jangle if it weren't for Regina. If she hadn't tried so very hard to turn Sinclair into one of those sorts when everything should have been telling the Ahroun that Sinclair was not meant to be a Corporate Wolf of any derivative thereof.

After all, look at her. She has humid-frizzed hair, titanium and steel pierced all through her body, signs and symbols etched into her flesh, a plain white tee and a pair of shorts, bare feet with teal toenails, and guacamole on the corner of her lip. Which she is unaware of, and which Alex does not help her with because he is, as Sinclair pointed out earlier, a dick.

She grins. "But I'm not crying in a van, so we're a step up." Which makes no sense to him, because he wasn't there the last time she got stoned, and doesn't know she was crying in a van (stoned) because he wasn't there.

They tromp through the house and Alex hauls open the door yelling at his mother. Sinclair beams and waves at her. She steps back out of the way while the two hug, and sees herself in a hallway mirror. "Shit," she says under her breath, and licks guac away, then goes back to beaming, blinking a few times.

Two hands come her way. Sinclair stares at them for a second, then grabs one and shakes it. "Hi. Sinclair. Not -- I mean. Hi, I'm Sinclair. Yes, I'm Heather. Only my parents call me Heather." A beat. "You can call me Heather if you really want to, though. Can I call you Ellen or is that rude?"

She's still shaking Ellen's hand. She abruptly lets go, realizing this, and puts her palms on her hips instead, standing up very straight. "I had two brownies," she says then, half-dejected, and apologetic.

Alex

The truth is, Alex likely has no idea it's his Boyfriendly Duty to remind Sinclair that there's guac on her lip. Or better yet, wipe it away. He thinks it's kinda cute. He lets it stay, thinking maybe later he'll make fun of her gently and she'll wail and call him a dick and he'll smooch her and she'll, well. Melt.

But that's not how it pans out. She wipes it away. He goes aw under his breath. His mom's saying hi to 'Heather', making Alex want to know who Heather is before he remembers, oh right, he told Aaron one time that Sinclair's first name was Heather, no shit, Heather, and it must've gotten around somehow. By then Ellen is looking at Sinclair rather closely and saying,

"Oh, Ellen's fine -- I'm sorry, but did Greg feed you -- "

I had two brownies.

There are a multitude of ways this could go. It's conceivable that Ellen would snatch her hands back now and begin scolding. It's also conceivable that she might, as Alex said, launch into a very reasonable, very well-thought-out guilt trip. But in truth, if she was that type of woman -- well. It's unlikely she would have raised two sons like Alex and Aaron. It's also unlikely she would've even stayed with Greg long enough -- no matter how well he hid his latter-day-hippie streak -- to even bear those two kids.

So, no. There's no shrilling, no shrieking. Just a weary, slightly worried, "Oh dear. Well, sit down, hon. Those are going to hit you really hard soon." And then: "Greg! Did you at least give her the cherryless ones?"

Greg from the other room, cheerful: "Of course not! What do you take me for, some sort of miser?"

Ellen makes an exasperated sound. "Well," there's a certain air of defeat here, "on the bright side, that should make even Aaron's cooking palatable." She turns to her son. "Alex, are you going to help me get the booze out of the car or are you just going to stand there all day?"

And Alex snaps a faux salute and heads for the car.

Sinclair

Dear and hon, she calls her, and Sinclair is reminded of her mother, and the midwesterner's penchant for appending terms of endearment to anyone and anything that doesn't move fast enough. She all but huffs that she's fine, that she's fine, she doesn't need to sit down --

and likely some of this comes out of her mouth, but not all of it and not in any kind of reasonable sequence, so she ends up saying something like "I'm fff -- I don't -- sit down," and it's all pretty quiet so it doesn't interrupt the flow of Ellen's hollering back and forth with her husband. Sinclair grabs Alex's hand again and swings his arm. "I'll help," she says, and hops barefoot off the front porch with him to go get the Booze, telling Alex: "I also helped cook dinner, and I'm a good cook, it won't be gross."

Alex

"I'm sure it'll rock," Alex says, and brings her hand up to his mouth for a quick kiss. "And if it doesn't, we can always have more awesomedip."

There are two six-packs in the back of Alex's mom's car, which is a sleek hybrid Lexus SUV. Alex's dad, on the other hand, drives a '69 Camaro. And not an immaculate one, either: a beat-up, clanking rustbucket that he seems to be in the process of restoring. There are also two jugs of premixed margaritas, and Alex, being Alex, tries to grab it all before Sinclair makes him give at least some of it up to her.

When they get back inside, they can smell the casserole. The family is gathering in the dining room, which is really just a subsection of the open space between living and family rooms. The dishes that Greg got out don't match, which seems to mortify Ellen a bit, but by the time Aaron brings the dip and the brownies to the table alongside the baked-brown casserole, she seems to have sunk into a sort of resigned contentment.

"Sinclair!" She waves as soon as she catches sight of Sinclair. "Come sit by me, hon. Greg, shoo, you go sit by Aaron."

"Hey, maybe I want to sit by Sinclair too."

"I saw her first," Alex says, smirking, and clunks the two bottles of margaritas down. Greg scoots one seat down, and Aaron sits between him and Ellen, and -- everyone settles, and then Alex is bounding up to grab another scoop of chip'n'dip, only to have the back of his hand swatted firmly by Ellen.

"You're not planning on kids anytime soon, are you, Sinclair? Because if they're anything like Alex and Aaron, you're going to have your hands full."

Aaron, meanwhile, stands up to start serving out his casserole. "I think this is my best one yet," he says, and then smiles at Sinclair. "Our," he amends.

Sinclair

She smiles when he kisses her hand, and turns it around in his grip to gently palm the lower half of his face, fingers brushing over him. Granted, her hand smells like tortilla chips and faintly of brownies, which is a weird combination, but the touch is incredibly soft, and utterly affectionate. She leans over and kisses him quickly, a little more firmly than she has at any point when his family was Right There.

Alex does try to grab it all, but Sinclair isn't just standing there. She picks up the jugs of margaritas and shakes her head at him for reaching for them while grabbing the six-packs as well, rolling her eyes. "I'm high, not Snow White," which makes sense to her. Snow White, after all, was like twelve years old and couldn't wield a broom so she had to make squirrels sweep the floor for her. With their tails.

This is what she tells him as they go inside, even though she wants to tell him that she can help his dad fix up the car, that's how she spent the last two years of high school on weekends and stuff, she spent most of her after-school-job paychecks on parts and stuff, she could totally help. But she's busy discussing Snow White's weak arms, so she doesn't get to mention it.

Bottles rattle and jugs thump as they're set down on countertops. Aaron is hunting in a drawer for a serving spatula or spoon for the casserole, Greg is opening a new bag of chips, and Alex grabs some cups for the 'ritas. Sinclair is, at that point, moving around a lot and not being of much use til Ellen hollers at her and she startles, flapping her hands and blurting: "What!" before Ellen finishes. "Oh," she says, dropping her hands to her sides and obediently heading over to drop herself into the chair next to Ellen as soon as it's vacant.

She looks petrified for about half a second, then Alex sits by her and she breaks into a glowing grin at him, like she hasn't seen him in a few weeks rather than the other half of that second. "Hi," she says. She frown-pouts when Ellen swats his hand, looking as though she's been wounded by this. So when Ellen is asking her if she's not planning on having kids, Sinclair looks more petulantly affronted than freaked out that Ellen is mentioning children.

"Oh, I can't raise my kids anyway," Sinclair says, shaking her head. She says this so matter-of-factly, so easily, that it almost hurts anyone who is not stoned to hear it. "They'd probably split their time between here and Kansas, so it'd really be your problem. And!" she adds, quite cheerfully: "You already have practice!"

Aaron is serving casserole. Sinclair smiles at him. "I like turkey," she says.

Alex

If Ellen (or Greg) look petrified by that suggestion -- well, Sinclair probably can't tell in her state, anyway. There's only a half-second of silence, though, and then Mr. and Mrs. Vaughn rally admirably. Ellen says, "Well, I sure hope you two have darling little girls," even as Greg's saying, "Oh hell, sure, bring 'em over. We love kids. I promise not to bake them brownies until they're past puberty," and Alex is protesting that they haven't even been conceived yet, can we please not talk about their puberty yet? and

Aaron smiles back at Sinclair and says, "Yeah, me too. You guys should come here for thanksgiving. Or I guess we can go to you, to prevent the in-law battle of who gets to host turkey day."

Sinclair

Alex, poor Alex, is protesting talking about his unborn, unconceived childrens' puberties -- god, daughters -- while Sinclair is quite happily saying "Oh, there'll probably be a few all at once anyway, given how IVF works, so maybe we'll have like... five, and they'll be like the Spice Girls --"

Alex does something -- squeezes her hand or gives her a Look or coughs or something -- and she blinks, looking at him. "What?" But then Aaron is mentioning Thanksgiving, which distracts her. Sinclair smiles, which feels like it lasts just a few seconds to her, then laughs out of nowhere.

"If I get really obnoxious," she whispers to Alex, leaning over, "tell me to go change, okay?" And kisses his cheek, picking up her fork and digging into the casserole. "We can have four Thanksgivings. I'm okay with that."

Alex

"How'd you even get four?" Alex wants to know.

Sinclair

Good question. Sinclair holds up her hand suddenly, nearly flinging wild rice across the table. She stops, and puts down her fork, then holds that hand up again. Her speech is slowing down a little. "One...in Kansas, with my mom and my dad. And the cousins. One in Florida, and we can grill veggies on kebabs outside because it'll be warm enough." She checks her hand: two fingers. Right. Good.

"One in San Diego with me and you and your team and whichever poor runaways are staying with us. Annnd one in Chicago with my pack." She thrusts four fingers into Alex's face, and waggles them an inch from his eyeballs. "Fooour."

Alex

And Greg is just laughing, and Ellen -- she of little marijuana use -- is looking a little perplexed, and Aaron is biting his lips and looking down at his yum-casserole trying not to join the laughter, and Alex gently takes Sinclair's hand and sets it down and leans over to kiss her, greasy food-y lips or not.

"Four. Okay. We can do that. But I thought you were sick of traveling."

Sinclair

"It's June," Sinclair reminds him. "By Thanksgiving I'll just be glad to still be alive. And you can fly this time, and then call me when you get here and I'll bzzzz." She makes a swishing motion with two fingers in the air as she makes this electronic noise, having solved every problem Alex has thrown at her and looking incredibly triumphant about it.

Particularly because she tries so hard to make all of this sound crisp and adult and sensible and in reality she sounds like she's really distracted by the buzzing noise. "Can I eat now?" she asks.

Alex

Sinclair probably misses this too: that flicker of pain that goes through Alex's eyes when she says, glad to still be alive. And the way Aaron darts a quick look at his brother, but Alex is only looking at Sinclair. And Ellen coughs under her breath and asks Greg to pass the dip, and Greg -- the only one oblivious to it all -- scooping it right up in one vigorous motion and passing it to his wife.

"Eat up," is all Alex says, though. And that's what they do.

Dinner conversation is a little haphazard and out-of-left-field, especially after Greg takes a mid-dinner interlude to wolf down another brownie. Then he's flying about as high as Sinclair is, and while Alex asks his mom about her work and whether there's been any progress on that thing with the state senator, redrawing drug-free zones around daycares and whatnot -- while Aaron is listening inquisitively and making suggestions here, offers there -- non sequiturs occasionally fly from both Sinclair and Greg. Things like,

Did you know turkey is both a white meat AND a dark meat?

and

It is so hot outside. I mean... it is like. SO hot I can see the infrared.

and

We should totally get a pool put in. That would just suck up the infrared and it'll be NICE.

and eventually everyone's full, and the casserole's three-quarters gone, and Alex is leaning back in his chair and belching rather thunderously, and Ellen is giving him a cross look and Aaron is reaching forward for a tiny, tiny bite of his dad's brownies and

it's still daylight outside, still hot and humid and Florida, and Sinclair and Greg are drifting down into a sort of mellow high where Greg mentions that Alex mentioned she could sing, and they have rock band on their Wii, and they totally have enough for a band right now. Which is how they end up on the Wii, with Aaron on the bass guitar, his dad on the lead guitar, Alex on the drums protesting this is nothing like the real thing, really, and Sinclair and Ellen sharing the mic.

Sinclair

Nobody tells Sinclair she's being obnoxious. That she's saying things that aren't good for anyone to hear. That her nerves are coming out with two 'toxic' brownies in her system and hitting her far faster and harder than they hit the man who grows the ganja that goes in them. She's quite happy after a certain point to just eat, and eat she does, all but shoveling food in her mouth and exclaiming that this is the best she's ever tasted, oh my god. The tortilla chips are, in her mind, the best thing ever, oh my god. She has water and some rita, but it's the water that Alex refills more, just to avoid adding fuel to the fire.

She laughs so hard she has to cover her mouth when Greg claims that they need to put the pool in to suck up the infrared so it won't be so hot outside. She has the good sense to stay out of the conversation revolving around Ellen's work, because the truth is, she doesn't believe in 'drug-free zones', doesn't believe that putting cameras up and posting signs does a damn bit of good, has her doubts that any of this work can be done on a wide scale, would be interjecting that the only way to fix people is for people to be with them, to be close, and there's not enough people in the world who are willing to deal with the people who are willing to do Bad Shit.

Sinclair doesn't get a long with a lot of Glass Walkers because of these things she believes about lobbying, about the way they can move money and laws around, doesn't really think that back in Chicago it will help much to gentrify the land around the caern because all it will do is upgrade the kind of horrors done, not cleanse anything.

So right about now, as bizarre as it is to see her giggling across the table with Greg Vaughn about how they should go find a swimming pool and ask to use it, it's better than her sitting awkwardly because she doesn't want to argue or sitting in dead silence because she won't pretend and make pleasant conversation that she doesn't believe in or sitting there telling Ellen Vaughn that her state senator would be better off legalizing and taxing marijuana to fund better counseling programs for substance abusers in recovery and/or better pay to attract and retain more extensively trained and experienced daycare teachers --

well maybe that last one would actually be interesting conversation, but Sinclair is leaning on the table and slowly turning her fork in front of her face, blinking every few seconds at how neat the turkey looks on it. Her mouth is hanging open a little. She doesn't want to eat it, but it's fascinating to her.

The next thing she knows she's sitting in the living room again and they're apparently going to play Rock Band. She blinks rapidly a few times and goes "What?" and then "What?" a few seconds later. "Nooo, I don't want to sing, my tummy's full," she wails, and puts a purple-and-blue pillow over her face. "Ellendoit. You'll be like the Patridge family."

And so they are. Sinclair decides to play groupie instead, pretending to scream and cry and tug on her hair and flail about, shrieking "I LOVE YOU GUYS OH MY GAWWWD" which makes Ellen laugh so hard she fucks up and the on-screen crowd starts booing, so she jumps up and helps their mom recover:

"-- there's nowhere to run, no one can save me the damage is DONE -- SHOT THROUGH THE HEART! And you're to blame!"

Alex

-- upon which Alex pitches in, filling the groupie role in a hideous falsetto: "Oh my god Jon Bon Jovi I looooove youuuuu! Eeeeee!"

And really, it's hard to keep playing after that.

A little later -- well, a lot later, really -- Ellen excuses herself with a yawn, saying she has to be up early in the morning. Greg gets up and puts his arm around her waist and walks her to the bedroom, and in that moment they're tender, comfortable, close.

Then it's just Alex, Aaron and Sinclair, and they toss throw pillows on the floor and flop down and dim the lights a little, and their highs have faded to pleasant background buzzing, and Alex finds some boyhood toy of his stuffed in the TV cabinet, takes it out: it's a little green plastic turtle with stars cut into its shell, and when the lights are off and you hit a button, a bulb blinks on inside the turtle that casts stars onto the ceiling.

"I used this when I was scared of the dark as a kid," Alex says quietly, scooting his pillow over next to Sinclair's. "There were a couple times when I was too scared to even get out of bed, and Aaron turned it on for me."

After a while, Aaron speaks:

"Most of the time it was Alex helping me out, though. I think there were even a couple times when he pretended to be me to get into fistfights and stuff."

"We really watched out for each other," Alex says. "All the time."

"Yeah." Another moment, and then Aaron lifts his head, looks over at Alex. "Sinclair tell you yet? She asked me to be part of her family-pack." He sounds happy.

Sinclair

From where she's curled up on the couch using Alex as a human teddy bear, Sinclair lifts a hand and waves to Ellen and Greg, starting to come down enough to recognize that she didn't talk to Ellen ...at all, really, and she doesn't know the woman much better than she did when they first shook hands, and she knows better than to blame that solely on marijuana. The thoughts disassemble themselves in her mind as her arm lowers, and she slides to the floor as they're trying to decide if they want to watch a movie or not. Nobody really feels like it, and then Alex decides to join her on the floor.

So that's how they end up with couch cushions and throw pillows creating a haphazard nest on the floor. Sinclair thinks about earlier today in the Everglades, pulling over to tell Alex about being a wolf with her pack. She smiles dreamily as he's rummaging around in the cabinet, and when he brings out the turtle, she brightens a bit. "Hey, I remember those," which sparks a brief recollection from them all about toys they wanted, and had, and thought were stupid, and that their friends had, when they were kids. They don't have a whole lot in common, truth be told -- in the experience of being a child, the difference in their ages was quite a bit.

Also the fact that Sinclair muses aloud about American Girl dolls for about five minutes before she realizes that Aaron and Alex are giving each other a Look like they're communicating telepathically. She huffs: "Well, I also rebuilt an El Camino, so fuck'ya'both."

By then the turtle is plugged in, and Alex has gotten Aaron to go turn off the rest of the lights. He flicks it on, and comes back over to Sinclair, telling her about what it was like when he was a little boy, and he was scared of the dark. She doesn't look shocked, and she doesn't tease him, and she doesn't remark on aww, how cute. What she does is slip her arms around his waist as he fluffs a pillow and lies next to her, and she listens to him speak. She looks up at the artificial stars, and she smiles softly, thinking of them back then, when they were all Kinfolk, and no matter what, Aaron and Alex would always be together.

A little while passes, and Aaron tells Alex what was discussed in the kitchen. She turns her head to give him a funny Look. "When would I have told him, you dork?" and gives him a gentle play-kick in the shin. But she lays her head back down next to Alex, and shakes her head. "That is so not exactly what I did," she says, and yawns against Alex's chest. "I asked if we could be family-pack. And that's totally different." Which, in a way, it is. "It's a merger," she finishes, in absolutely accurate Glass Walker terms, "and since your parents like me and my parents like you and you and I like each other I just had to make sure Aaron wasn't going to be all grr --" she gives an actual snarl, one that could set both their hairs on edge, one that Aaron at least will instinctively and instantly recognize as the sort of pack-protecting, territory-defending growl she's imitating. "So now we can all be one big pack, and it's happy."

She drapes her arm over Alex's chest then, holding him near. "The Sinvaughnclair pack," she decides, after a moment. "It has --" here come the counting fingers again, "two wolves in it. And two mommies. And two daddies. And two brothers. And two us...es."

Her hand flops back down, and she nuzzles him, and she smiles to herself. "I always wanted a brother or a sister or something. When I was scared of the dark and my parents said I was too old to get in bed with them anymore I just had to hide under the covers holding my Felicity doll."

Alex

"The Sinvaughnclair pack," Alex says softly, smiling. "I like that."

A few moments go by. Then a certain honesty, a certain raw truth that is only possible in the dark, with safety stars on the ceiling, with the two people in the world he's closest to nearby:

"I've always wanted to be in a pack. So I guess we both get our wishes."

Sinclair

It's not something he's ever said before, or even alluded to. The closest would be in the car out in the Everglades, listening to Sinclair talk about her own pack. The way he asked her what she was when she was with him, the half-buried ache of wistfulness in his voice, made her wonder. But oh, she wouldn't assume. She wouldn't just decide that all Kinfolk wish they were Garou, even the Kin like Alex who have chips on their shoulder the size of Everest.

She buries her face against his chest, as though to breathe in his very heartbeat, holding him there on the floor. And there's Aaron with him, too, but Aaron doesn't suddenly glomp on to Alex at those words. Sinclair is already glomped. She breathes in and out once, a long exhale, and lays on his arm. "Yeah," she murmurs, because even getting this wish is bittersweet: because she still can't go back and grow up with someone, and there still isn't anyone who has known her since she was a child, who shares her parents, who just knows things that no one else can have explained to them.

And Alex still isn't Garou. And his twin brother, and his mate, are.

It's all raw, and tender, and simultaneously aching with pain and with growing affection between them. Sinclair rubs her foot against Alex's leg, and she asks quietly: "So are we staying here tonight?"

Alex

Alex says nothing as Sinclair glomps onto him. Sometimes, for all his arrogance and his loud mouth and his trash-talking tongue, Alex personifies strong-silent-type. Or at least: silent-with-uncomfortable-emotional-things-type.

He holds her, though. Very tightly, as though it hurts not to. And after a while, Aaron reaches over, puts his hand on Alex's shoulder a moment. Says nothing more than that.

A little later, Sinclair asks if they're staying. And Alex draws a breath, lets half out before he answers.

"Yeah," he says. "I'd like to. And maybe we can go jogging with my mom tomorrow morning. Spend a little time with her before we head back."

Sinclair

A moment ago, Sinclair was close to grabbing Aaron's arm and hauling him over to get closer to them both, so she's glad that he decides to make physical contact with Alex just then. Bad form to dislocate one's brother's shoulder so soon after adopting the term 'brother'.

"We don't have to rush back," Sinclair muses. "Nice thing about being transiently employed. We haven't had much time with this family." She doesn't use the word 'your'. "I don't --"

A beat. "I want to be home with you, but I want to stay here a little longer." She peers over at Aaron, as though to make sure he's on her side on this, because then they'll outnumber Alex.

Alex

"You should absolutely stick around," Aaron opines. "What is it tomorrow ... Thursday? Well, Dad and I don't really have a schedule, so we can go down to Key West or something. It's a pretty fun drive. And if you stay through to Saturday, we can grab Mom and go to Disney World on Friday night. The night tickets are cheaper and there's a lot fewer people."

Alex: "Disney World? I was going to say yes until you said that."

Aaron, very seriously: "Well, we don't have to go to Disney World, then."

Alex: "I'm just yanking your leg, man. We can do Disney World if Mom wants to. And if you and Sinclair can keep from ripping heads off while you wait in line."

Sinclair

Sinclair doesn't opine on Disney World, nor on whether or not it's a good idea to go to Disney World where the lines are going to be long even if the Friday night crowds aren't as thick. She does say, after awhile: "Is your mom just... going to work the whole time we're here?"

Alex

There's a beat of silence from both brothers, a little taken aback. Maybe not even that. Maybe just -- the sort of silence one gives when one's never bothered to think about something.

Alex answers first, "Well, I mean -- she'll be home in the evenings. But yeah, Mom's probably gonna work the rest of the week. She's not taking time off, is she?"

"I don't think she was planning to," replies Aaron. He lifts his head a little -- shadowy in the dim room with the lamplight stars on the ceiling. "Did you want her to spend a little more time at home, Sinclair?"

Sinclair

Sinclair's brow is furrowed as she lies half on top of Alex, which is remarkable only in that there are other people present -- but those 'other people' are just Aaron right now, and he is family-pack and probably understands the tendency towards full-body contact as the only form of contact acceptable to a creature like Sinclair.

"Doesn't she want to spend time with us?" she asks, which isn't entirely an answer to Aaron's question, perhaps because she's not entirely sure of what that answer is.

Alex

"Oh, baby," and this, too, is the sort of thing -- the sort of gentle tone, the sort of loving words -- that Alex would never use in front of 'other people'. Except Aaron isn't other people; he's Aaron. Other-half. Brother. "Of course she does. I think my mom's just like this. She won't drop everything else unless there's some sort of real emergency, and we're not an emergency. She probably just figures she'll be seeing so much of us now that there's nothing she needs to rush.

"But if you want more time with her, we can stay through the weekend. Or I'll ask her to maybe take some time off for her firstborn son."

Aaron snorts softly, kicking Alex's shin halfheartedly.

Sinclair

She didn't sound terribly upset with the words, for what that's worth. But a little confused. A little taken aback that Ellen came home from work, they had dinner, played some Rock Band, and ...that was it. And from the sounds of things, would be it. And if they went home in the morning it might be a jog around the block or something with her and away they'd go. Thoughtful, mostly, similar to the tone of the silence Aaron and Alex had given when she'd asked about their mother in the first place.

"I'd like to have a chance to get to know them," Sinclair says quietly, and this time it isn't just Ellen. "I figured they'd want to get to know me more, too."

She lifts her leg across Alex and kicks back at Aaron gently, too. "I always wondered which one of you came out first. I figured it was Aaron."

Alex

"They do," Aaron says; here, it's apparent what his auspice is. It's in his calm certainty, and it's that touch of unknowing arrogance almost every Philodox has -- as though he were so familiar with the truth now that every word out of his mouth is imbued with its power. "But I think in this, my parents are similar: they don't mind letting relationships develop at their own pace. I think they're much more worried about forcing attachment or... accidentally smothering you with affection or something.

"Don't worry," he adds, and she can hear the smile in his voice. "They'll probably come up with an excuse to take a vacation in San Diego soon. But you should definitely stay through the weekend."

Sinclair says she figured Aaron came out first. Now it's Alex's turn to give a snort, incredulous and mock-offended. Aaron's simply curious: "Really? Why?"

Sinclair

"Well, that pace is going to be a lot more tolerable if your mom comes home early one of these days," Sinclair says quite firmly, with all the casual demand as though she were born third child and only female. They can all count themselves lucky she wasn't, as Sinclair would probably be a far more dangerous princess than, say, Katherine or Gabriella Bellamonte. "And maybe spending time with me where we're not surrounded by stinky boys."

She stretches out a bit, putting her chin on Alex's shoulder and smiling at him even as she's answering the Philodox: "Cuz Aaron's totally more mature."

Alex

"Hah!" Alex says, sitting up in outrage. Or trying to, anyway. Likely Sinclair glomps him until he lies back down. "Aaron's just a big old wet blanket, is all."

Meanwhile, Aaron -- mature, serious creature that he is -- is saying, "I'll mention to Mom that maybe she can take the afternoon off tomorrow or something. Then we can go out to the Keys together. It'll be nice."

Sinclair

She does, in deed. He wants to be a part of a pack, he said, so she flops on top of him and opens her mouth over his shoulder, proving again that their strength is -- however surprising this continues to be to him, when he's not used to women who he'd be wary of meeting in the ring -- equal. She nomfs happily then, even as he's calling his brother a wet blanket. She lets a vaguely saliva-damp spot on his shirt and then smiles at Aaron.

"Yeah," she says. "We can all go outside."

Right now she's lying so much on Alex that it doesn't take much for her to mistake him for a bed. She nuzzles her head down on his chest like she's rubbing herself into a pillow and yawns, eyes drifting closed and open again. "Aaron. Aaron, get blanket."

Alex

"Y'know," Aaron says, amused, "we do have perfectly good bedrooms in the house."

Nonetheless, he obliges -- reaching over to the couch and snagging down the throw. With very little self-consciousness, he spreads it over all three of them, scooting a little closer to his brother. Ew, cooties, says Alex, yawning. Aaron ignores him, rearranges one of the throw pillows under his head, and closes his eyes.

"Goodnight, Sinclair," he says. "Goodnight, Alex."

"Night, Aaron," Alex replies, quieter. And, "Night, Sinclair."

Sinclair

"G'NIGHT MA!" Sinclair yells suddenly, lifting her head and half-hollering into the dark. "G'NIGHT, PA. G'NIGHT JOHN-BOY."

And she's likely getting shushed and then she's giggling, shoving her face against Alex under the covers and snickering. There is tugging and gentle fighting over the blanket between Aaron and Sinclair, because they're on the outer edges, and Alex grousing at them to just be still, and Sinclair ends up losing just because she's yawning. She and Alex end up a bit rearranged anyway, and he knows she won't be moving for another nine or ten hours even if she loses the blanket entirely, has the pillow pulled out from under her head, and someone starts vacuuming around her.

She's the first one asleep, dropping like a stone into unconsciousness. She is the last one to wake, and when she does, the first word out of her mouth is a whining "Oww..." at the crick in her neck. Or the sun in her eyes. Or both.