hello, i'm here now.

[Sinclair] Last time: I don't hear a peep from you until, BAM, there you are

So this time: you home?

And the answer is no, so the text messages go back and forth til it's worked out: she'll meet him there, and she'll have her car because it's fucking freezing outside, though the weather is actually starting to get up in the forties now. It's raining instead of snowing, when it precipitates. But it's still fucking cold, to a guy from Miami and a girl from -- at least most recently -- San Diego. This is heavy coat weather, all the same.

She's not sitting on the hood of the car or on the top of it when Alex comes out of Tribull. Sinclair's hanging out in the driver's seat, listening to some very loud music that is often described as unce unce unce. She's thumping her head along with the beat, cleaning under her fingernails.

It's raining. Heavily. The dark green of the El Camino glistens.

[Alex Vaughn] It's heavy coat weather. But being Alexander Vaughn, and more importantly, being Alexander Vaughn who's coming out of Tribull to meet the girl he's currently exclusively-dating, or at least occasionally-fucking, he's decided to emerge just as he is: sweaty, in MMA shorts and a muscle shirt, the one red and the other black.

His hair has grown out some since Rio. It's still short enough to show the glisten of sweat on his scalp. He comes around the passenger's side of the El Camino, pulls the door open, throws his gymbag into the back and thumps in.

"This music is shit," he says loudly. He stinks; he has a cut over one eye where his sparring partner got a little rough. "But then so's the band I'm drumming for these days, so who'm I to judge. At least I'm getting paid to listen to their crap though."

[Sinclair] The rain didn't have much time to wash Alex clean. He reeks of sweat, his own and that of others. He smells like a locker room. His face is swollen around that cut. Sinclair's eyes slice towards it, the tool from the red-enameled miniature Leatherman pausing under one fingernail. The moon's waning, waning, thinning, wanting to be gone and dark and asleep so the New Moons can come out and play. Her rage is a banked fire, but her very nature is a pulsing, constant thing, at ease with sweat and blood

but also ruled by instincts far out of her control.

There isn't much of a 'back' to the car. There's space behind the seats where his gym bag ends up wedged beside the little polyester one behind Sinclair's seat. She doesn't have her seatbelt on. She's been waiting maybe ten minutes; the car is warm on the inside, and she's just wearing a black t-shirt with a small pocket over the left breast, a tiny red heart screenprinted onto that pocket. Her hair is in two little braids, strawlike and tight but fraying, resting on her clavicles.

"I like it," she says, either mildly or dismissively or both. She doesn't turn it down; they both have to speak up to be heard, at least at first. She flicks the Leatherman closed and tosses it into the open glovebox, which has everything from tampons to talens -- and even registration information -- inside. She slaps the compartment closed and looks at him

and her mouth quirks a little, restrained and killed. She slides her finger on the dial and drags the volume of the music down. "You still like me?"

[Alex Vaughn] He has to look at her twice -- once out of sheer surprise; then incredulity.

"What the fuck, Sinclair, you aren't the type of chick who needs approbation every two weeks."

[Sinclair] "I'm really not," she says, just as matter of factly as the question itself, "but last time I saw you I woke up alone. And left you a note telling you to call me. And you didn't. So I think it's fair to ask: do you. Still like me?"

She's still watching him, blinking those pale little eyes of hers. The track on the stereo switches to some trance-ish, female-voiced song about insomnia.

[Sinclair] [DLP!]

[Sinclair] For a moment or two she's just staring at him. Rather levelly, truth be told. The music's down, and the track switches to some trance-ish, female-voiced song about insomnia. Twelve thirty a.m., I'm awake again... and Sinclair just blinks those pretty pale eyes at him.

"Humor me," she says quietly. No promises never to ask again. No explanations: I'm tired or it's been a long couple of weeks or you made me nervous last time. Just her eyes on his, rain overpowering the music on her stereo now, and that:

tell me anyway.

[Alex Vaughn] Alex pauses in the midst of pulling his seatbelt on. He stares at her for another second. Then, quite without preamble, he reaches over to her, pulls her across the gearshift and the center console and kisses her.

It goes on for a while. There's nothing shy or uncertain or forced about it. It's possible he's kissing her to shut her up; it's also quite possible he's kissing her because he's wanted to since working this meeting out.

When it parts, he lingers a moment -- then throws himself back into his seat, reaching over his shoulder to pull the seatbelt into place. "Of course I still like you," he says, almost offhandedly. "And if I didn't, I'd let you know. Okay? So you don't have to ask."

[Sinclair] It's abrupt. Or sudden. Abrupt might imply that it's over quickly, and it isn't. Sinclair seems caught off guard, tensing when he grabs her, eyes flashing for a moment until she figures out what he's doing. What he's actually doing, which is making out with her in the parking lot of his gym. While it rains. And while she holds onto her steering wheel. The leather creaks under her hands, the sound absorbed by music and weather, as her grip tightens.

Her eyes are incompletely closed when he pulls back, her head ducked slightly, cheekbone to cheekbone. She breathes, and it's warm. Then blinks a few times, drawing back as he's flinging himself away. Sinclair watches him.

"And if I want to hear you say it, I'm gonna ask." A beat, and the hint of a near-smile at one corner of her mouth. "So deal with it."

A few moments later they're leaving the parking lot, and she's jerking her chin at the stereo. "You can change that if you want to," she says, flicking on her wipers.

[Alex Vaughn] He doesn't change it: he flicks it off. "Ah," he says, exaggeratedly, "blessed fucking silence."

It's freezing cold outside. He cracks one of the windows open anyway, then flaps his shirt against his chest, ventilating. They pull out of the parking lot onto Lake Shore Drive. Alex glances Sinclair's way.

"You all right? You look sorta shitty."

[Alex Vaughn] [cut last line!!]

[Alex Vaughn] "So what have you been up to?"

[Sinclair] "Yes, because you yourself are like a monk, speaking only once a year on your patron saint's feast day or whatever," Sinclair mutters dryly in response to his comment about silence. The cold air comes in through the crack in the window and she glances at him, watches him tug the shirt away from his chest and breathes out, looks forward again.

"Just... shit," she mutters, exhaling. "Fucking moot was like a week after I saw you. And two of my packmates were... fucking stupid assholes."

The last time he saw her, she was gleaming. She's not anymore. It's a subtle difference, really. But even then, it's a difference. It's a difference between Sinclair lounging by a pool in Rio or rolling around with him in the grass of the gardens and... this. This cold, filthy city. Her car. Chicago. Everything normal again, and bringing with it some measure of awkwardness.

"And we might be getting a new packmate, who's pretty awesome, but she's a Fang, so I'm just waitin' for the crazy. And I... kinda have all this other stuff on my mind, too." A shrug of one shoulder. She turns, seemingly at random. "Where do you want to go? You want to eat or something?"

[Alex Vaughn] "What stuff?" Alex asks: genuinely interested.

Then, he shoots her another glance. Drops his shirt, laughs. "I should probably take a shower. But if you don't mind the stank we should go grab a burger. You like Islands?"

[Sinclair] A deep breath, and a slow exhale, and a shrug. She's glancing over at him again, and then laughs quietly to herself, looking back in the right direction. "Let's go back to your place first. I don't mind how you smell. But you smell like the other guy, too." And, apparently, she does mind that.

"As for 'stuff'... I don't know. My parents keep calling to ask if I'm coming home for my birthday this year. I think... I'm supposed to challenge for rank soon, and I'm kind of freaking out that maybe I'm not ready." She shrugs. "My Alpha keeps talking about this Hive up in Moraine Hills, and he's the elder of his auspice now so I'm pretty sure we're going to war, and --"

it seems once she gets started, it's all flowing out. On the drive back to his place she tells him about Edward challenging Kate, and what an embarrassment it was. She tells him about Theron challenging for and failing to become the Theurge Elder, and how their totem broke with them temporarily because of it. She tells him:

"And this Fang, she kinda... got booted or asked to resign or whatever because she wouldn't mate and breed with this fat old bastard they wanted her to mate with and her, like... specific line is dying out or something and so it's like this big deal. But I'm sitting over here thinkin', well, our entire Tribe is going nowhere because we aren't breeding, but even if I wanted to there's just no way because we're about to go to war and in this sept Fosterns, like, teach and lead and if that's what I'm going to be expected to do I'm pretty much hyperfucked."

She frowns. They're actually getting nearer to his place. "I'm sorry. I'm just ...unloading on you. I really didn't message you because I needed to unwind or something." She looks at him at a red light, sort of grimacing. It's a hard expression, which fades into something softer. "I just wanted to see you."

[Alex Vaughn] "Hah!" Alex's head swings Sinclair's way. He tosses off the laugh like a javelin, like a bark. "Guess a threeway is outta the question then. Not that I'd be all that interested in a threeway with some other dude."

She starts talking, then. He looks out the window, mostly, and once in a while fingers the cut over his eye, which is good and staunched up with coagulant and not even threatening to bleed now. It'll bruise, though, leave him with a swollen eyebrow for a couple days; nothing that'll keep him out of the cage on Saturday.

He's listening, though he doesn't look it. She talks about rank, and Hives, and a new packmate and dying lineages and --

Red light. She looks at him. He looks back: all heavy brow and high-cut cheekbones, hazel eyes that might be warm and friendly if he weren't, well. Him.

"Don't apologize," he says. "I asked. I wouldn't have if I didn't wanna know. Just like I wouldn't be here if I didn't want to be here. Just like I wouldn't have said all-right to our little arrangement if I wasn't interested in you. Just like I wouldn't have told you it's all right to unload if it wasn't.

"I know you probably don't have a whole lot of experience with guys, but stop doubting everything, all right? It makes me feel like I'm back in middle school and I hated middle school. Just... I don't say shit I don't mean, and I don't do shit unless I want to, Sinclair. Or not do 'em just because someone else doesn't want me to."

He pauses here; twists his head on his neck as though the conversation's put a physical strain on him. Grimaces.

"Sorry if that was harsh. I just want that out in the open. So we can both stop second-guessing everything."

[Sinclair] At the red light, Sinclair does indeed look at him, the left side of her face illuminated. It's turned red by the stoplight, splattered with shadows by the rain, swept clean and then covered again every time the wipers swish over the windshield. When he tells her stop doubting everything, she turns to face forward again, a muscle working in her cheek. The light turns green again before Alex is done talking, and they've gone another stretch of road before he's done talking, and she hits another red light.

"Motherfucker," she snaps at it, frowning. The light sticks where it is, glaring red, and she takes a breath before looking at him, to finally answer. "Alex... you don't know how much experience I have with guys, other than that you're the first to fuck me. Or go down on me. So don't assume." For all the tension that spiked while she was driving again, Sinclair sounds reasonable. Calm. Her voice is pitched low and slow, despite the rain. It doesn't change, even as she swears, even as she says things that in any other tone of voice would sound like jawsnaps in the air at his throat. Like:

"And y'know what else? I wasn't fucking doubting you when I said I was sorry. I was telling you that all the shit I have going on isn't why I wanted to see you. So don't lecture me, either, or imply I'm a fucking middle school girl. You've said it all before, and given that it's one of the reasons I like you, I haven't exactly forgotten. I got it, alright?"

The light switched a moment ago. Someone honks, and she snaps again: "Mother fucker!" And drives.

[Alex Vaughn] Alexander turns to look at her as she snarls mother fucker! the second time. He's still looking at her a block later, frowning, when he says:

"All right."

Quiet. In a tone that faintly placating. A little careful. He looks forward again, and rolls down his window a little bit more. The rain is frigid, stinging his arm where it flecks in the open window: above freezing, but only barely.

[Sinclair] To him: calm. A little exasperated. But calm.

But to the light: a snarl, nearly smacking her hand on the dash or the wheel, annoyed at the interruption.

They end up driving on in silence after that, because the care he takes when he says that all right is obvious, and the control she's exerting over her reaction is, too. What she's controlling is harder to discern, if only because everything goes so quickly to anger and violence with her. Hurt. Fear. Happiness, even. Shame.

She remembers where he lives, though she's only been to his apartment once. She doesn't stop at an intersection and struggle to remember which way to go; she just turns. She drives as smoothly as though this is muscle memory, as though she does this every day. Which might, itself, be unnerving too.

When they get to his building, she can't find a spot right by the door. It'll be a dash, or a leisurely but very wet walk, from the El Camino to the interior. So she waits, while he's unbuckling his belt or even if he's just sitting there, and considers him a moment.

Then, quietly: "I really wasn't doubting you, Alex."

[Alex Vaughn] Rain makes the day dark. The long low hood of the el camino makes the interior dark, which in turns makes his eyes dark, though alert, as they flick over Sinclair's face.

Then he nods. "Alright," he says. "I believe you."

The seatbelt snaps back over his shoulder. Or across his lap, if this was before the age of over the shoulder seatbelts. He opens the door, stepping out on the sidewalk, reaching behind his seat to tug his gymbag out from where it wedged. Now that he's had some time to cool off, the cold hits him like a slap, wet and stinging.

"Fuck!" he says, hopping on the balls of his feet. "Fuck me, it's cold!"

[Sinclair] She kisses him. Quickly, before the seatbelt comes completely off, while he's still looking at her and the car is still warm because the cold hasn't been permitted entry. Her keys are in her right hand, which braces her on the console, but her left hand goes to his face. The touch is so light as to seem tentative because she's lying, or careful with him because he's fragile, or

simply tender, because that is how she feels.

Sinclair doesn't know why he went quiet. What to her seems like bursts of vague and passing annoyance are in reality rather terrifying surges of wrath from a creature he knows full well might snap at any moment. In this, he can see her more clearly than she can see herself. But she doesn't ask, either, and she doesn't peer at him in the aftermath of his nod to try and see if he's really telling the truth, if he really believes her. Sinclair isn't given to ferreting out that sort of insight.

She is, however, given -- at least at the moment -- to the fact that being here in her car with it raining outside has reminded her suddenly of walking around in the afternoon rain in Rio de Janeiro, and kissing him through smiles, fat cold wet drops rolling over the corner of their mouths. Everything's been awkward since they got back, and she's not sure if it's her, or if it's Chicago, or if it's the way Carnival ended for them both.

When she stops kissing him, though, she lowers her head and rests her temple against his cheek, exhaling. After a moment, Sinclair nuzzles Alex under his jawline, and draws back, reaching for the door handle and unfolding her denim-clad legs from the car. She doesn't take anything with her but her keys, and shuts the door with surprising care after thumbing down the lock.

The rain starts trying to saturate her little braids. She laughs. "Then go inside, genius!" she says. She's in short sleeves. No jacket. She hasn't shivered yet, but she will. If she stays outside. Which they won't.

[Alex Vaughn] In this much she's lucky: Alex is just as bad as lying, just as unsuited to the thought, as Sinclair is. To begin with, it's doubtful it'd ever occur to him to lie. And even if he did, she'd see it in an instant. He'd wear the lie on his face, in his actions, on his sleeve.

So this can't be a lie either: the sudden response to her kiss, the way he presses back into it, returns it, inhaling. Or the way they rest together for a moment afterward, her temple to his cheek, and then her nose under his jawline, tipping his head back and to the side slightly

which makes his heartbeat skip, too. Because she's a predator. Because her teeth are close to his pulse, and because a moment ago -- whether she intended it or not -- she was terrifying.

Then they're climbing out of her car, and he's complaining of the cold, and she's laughing at him to go inside. His grin is a little uncertain at first, as though unsure if it should exist. Then suddenly he decides; he laughs, too.

"Fuck you," he says, slinging the gym bag over his shoulder. He holds his hand out to hers as she comes up the curb. "Race you."

-- and then he's letting go her hand and taking off at a dead sprint.

[Sinclair] Their hands barely glance off of each other. Nothing like when they kiss, which usually lasts for some time. Sinclair's getting soaked, Alex already was from sweat and now he's just getting drenched, but she takes his hand when she steps up and then

they let go and sneakers go squealing on pavement, because, frankly, they're both competitors. Sinclair used to be a driven overachiever, her transcripts weighted heavily with extracurriculars. Alex is... well. Alex. She used to win national championships, come in first, set the curve, and in everything she could outstrip and outshine all of her peers. Alex says race you and by now they both know it's not idle, and there's no chance she'd take it as such.

Though they hit the door at almost the same moment, hands smacking within such a narrow fraction of a second it's imperceptible. Sinclair puts her hand on his arm, less tenative (or careful, or tender) than before, and presses forward to kiss him again, harder this time. Deeper.

[Alex Vaughn] It's a minor miracle they don't go skidding off some patch of half-melted ice and knock their heads open on the pavement. It's a minor miracle the closest thing to a mishap there is is when they jostle each other running for the door, and smack both their hands down so hard one of Alex's neighbors standing inside jumps.

He's panting harder than she is, but it doesn't stop him from kissing her back here, either. It doesn't stop him from suddenly dropping the gym bag on the stoop and grabbing Sinclair, turning her back to the door, crowding her between his hard hot body and that lockless, intercomless excuse for a front gate and, quite frankly, mauling her face for a while.

When they pull apart he's panting harder. His eyes don't leave her as he digs in his pockets and finds his keys, and after a while -- for no better reason than that they're here, she's here, they're alive and hungry for each other -- he laughs.

Keys found. They're not for the front door, anyway, which opens easily when he turns the knob. They're for his door up on the fourth story, and he shoulders his gym bag again and pounds up four flights of stairs, huffing at the top, grabbing her by the hand again. Kissing, they run into the wall, the fire extinguisher bolted to the wall, and his neighbor's door before they find his, and he fits his key into the lock and kicks the door open and throws his gym bag onto his sofa and slams his front door shut with one hand while he scoops her right off the ground with the other.

"We can shower later, can't we?" He puts her back to the wall long enough to pull his shirt off, drop it on the floor.

[Sinclair] A minor miracle, except they're both agile, deft, and quick on their feet. They know how to fall if they have to, how to take a hit, how to keep from breaking their arms on the sidewalk, and in both cases: they've learned from hard experience how to be all the things they are. Including dangerous. Sinclair is breathing more rapidly when they reach the door, when she kisses him, but it isn't from exertion. She puts her arms around his neck when he grabs at her, forearms crossing behind his head, every inch of her pressed back firm and eager against him.

When they pull apart, they're both panting, and dripping, and Sinclair doesn't laugh. She turns her head and kisses his neck, opens her mouth and pulls softly at the skin with her lips, then grazes it with her teeth. Her tongue slides out over the mark with savoring slowness and perhaps shocking lightness, tracing aimless design over thin flesh.

While he tries to get them in the door, out of the cold, which she wasn't feeling too strongly before and isn't feel at all, now. There's a tug and a faint groan of resistance when Alex moves away to run upstairs, but then a sharp eagerness:

they race up the stairs, too. Jostle without necessarily resorting to pushing each other down. Here, Sinclair jumps ahead the landing. There, Alex laughs as she misjudges her turn to the next flight and darts upward. Then, yes, hands locking at the top, one pulling the other past the final step to the hallway of apartments on the fourth floor.

Sinclair's on him again with a noise that would be relieved if she were satisfied, or remotely close to it. She puts him against the wall. He pushes back against her and her shoulder slams into the fire extinguisher's panel. It makes her bare her teeth for a moment, breathing in sharply, and put her hands on his hip, dragging him forward to press against her.

When her back hits the neighbor's door, she thinks it's his, or doesn't care: Sinclair moans softly when they kiss this time, her heart slamming in her chest, grabbing fistfulls of his shirt. When he tugs her to his door and works at unlocking it, she stands behind him, arms around his waist, hands moving up under his shirt to stroke over his flat, well-defined abdominals, mouth near the back of his neck, hot air rushing over his skin, skirting the edge of his neckline.

Want is all she's aware of, filling every beat of her pulse, like the way pain becomes the very rushing of blood in your ears. Alex is getting them into his apartment but Sinclair is starting to move her hand into the front of his shorts, barely beginning to search for his cock before he's turning around and slamming the door shut, grabbing her to lift her up. She grabs the collar of his shirt in her fist, yanks down and forward hard as she pulls him closer again, and creates a long, open tear down the front.

"Want you," she's half-groaning, half-growling, rubbing against him through her ridiculously tight jeans and his shorts.

Even so, despite her grinding and despite the fistfull of torn fabric in her hand, she's shuddering from the effort at control when she kisses him again.

[Sinclair] [fistful!]

[Alex Vaughn] At the door: she's touching him, running her hands under his shirt and reaching into his shorts, and he's heaving breaths against her hands as he fumbles with the keys and

and later: he doesn't tug his shirt off his head after all. She grabs it and tears it straight down the front, revealing a stretch of taut, tanned musculature; the tight, compact build of his body. "Holy shit," he gasps, laughingly, and then strips out of the remains of his shirt the way one might a jacket.

It's left on the floor. He scoops her up off the wall and they go careening down the short hall into his bedroom, his balance offkilter with her weight on him. His knee bumps his dresser as he goes by. Cheap wood creaks. He drops her on his bed. His nightstand drawer rattles, phones and coins and condom boxes and a bottle of advil, as he rummages through it. Condoms scatter all over the bed. He grabs one and all but jumps up on the fullsize mattress after her.

"Oh my fucking god, get these off." He's tugging at the legs of her jeans, tugging them as she -- hopefully -- works at the button and the fly, and the second she gets those open he'll rip them right off her legs and fling them to some dark ignominous corner of the room. Her panties follow, and his shorts, and he's kneeling on the bed then, his chest rising and falling, the muscles of his abdomen flexing and relaxing as he breathes, as he tries to keep a level consciousness long enough to roll the condom on.

[Sinclair] [and fistfuls! oy.]

[Sinclair] It's been something like three weeks since she had him on the grass by that river. It's been something like three weeks since he's gotten laid, because now suddenly it isn't about getting that waitress to give him her number or pissing off the ticket girl at the latest match until she'll fuck him in the showers or whatever his moves were, whatever his game used to be. Now it's Sinclair. Or his hand.

Or Sinclair's hands, all over him, unsure of where they want to be first, where they want to stay. She's afraid for a moment, flashing and then gone, that she'll scare him: tearing his shirt, baring her teeth, snarling for desire. It's gone long before he laughs the way he does, and well before he pulls her back from the wall and goes down the hallway with her.

"God," she groans, when she flops onto his mattress, his unmade bed, the blanket and sheets rumpled and smelling of him. While he's digging through his nightstand, Sinclair's nipping at his chest, licking his clavicles, running her hands up his back while her feet wiggle between his, kicking off her sneakers. They smack against his dresser, thump to the floor. Her hands find his ass, and pull him roughly against her. She pants, each breath a shaking exhale, tremors going through her chest.

He tells her to get her jeans off and she doesn't have any idea what he's talking about for a moment, until he gives that first hard tug on the denim. "Ow!" she says, as it rubs on her hips, but it isn't a very pained noise. Discomfort, flickering and amused, before she wiggles her hands between their bodies, knuckles touching his belly, and all but tears her own clothing trying to get the button and zipper undone. The denim scrapes down her legs and off.

Her panties are dark purple. They're soft cotton, they come in packs of six, they ride low, low, low on her hips and curl up as he draws them down her legs

which are long, and smooth, and warm.

Sinclair bends her knees after her panties leave her ankles and go flying somewhere else. She props herself up on her elbows and watches him focus on getting the condom on. Her hair's askew, but still in those fraying farmgirl braids. There's a new tattoo on her body, a rather ornate one that wraps around her left ankle like a cuff. There are words winding through it, and they're not English, but who cares.

She's naked now but for her fitted black t-shirt with the little pocket, the little red heart, her ankle socks, and whatever is underneath her shirt, but Alex is bare and Sinclair is feverishly hot to the touch when she reaches for him, pulling him between her legs and wrapping them around his waist. "Give it to me," she says, demanding more than pleading, though maybe it's both, clutching at his shoulders before she opens her mouth to his.

Her nails dig into him when he first touches his cock to her, when he rubs it over her cunt or touches her with his hand or -- anything. Sinclair is obscenely wet, her body obvious and anxious in its desire, her back arching for it. "Fuck me," she breathes, ass rubbing against his linens as she tries to get him inside of her.

[Alex Vaughn] Sinclair all but drags Alexander down atop her. He catches himself on the mattress, manages not to topple onto her, makes a muffled mmph against her mouth as she's wrapping her legs around him and he's reaching down to guide himself to her. She's so fucking wet. He can tell even through the condom; can tell by the way his cock slips over her, by the way she's breathing and the way she's moving, moving onto him, arching her back for him.

The curtains are still closed in his bedroom. He's up early enough that in these winter months it's still mostly dark out when he's out the front door. It's rather gloomy in his bedroom but that's all right; he doesn't need to see it

give it to her, just like she says.

A short, panting groan as he flexes into her. He's naked except for his socks; she's naked except for her shirt. He leans down to kiss her again, hard, his hand pushing under that shirt to find her breast. He cups her through her bra for a moment. Then he's trying to tear that article of clothing off of her too -- the shirt, then the bra -- or at least to get them both out of the way so he can fasten his mouth to her nipple and suck at her as he starts fucking her.

Three weeks is a long time. She's still new to this. He knows both these facts, so he tries to be careful with her. Tries to go slow, go light at first; it doesn't last very long. It's been a long time for him, too. It's been a long fucking time and she ripped his goddamn shirt off, for fuck's sake; was all but jerking him off at the door; was all but eating his face in her car. His mouth tears from hers, panting. His brow to hers, his one hand fisted over her head, bracing himself on a forearm, his other rubs and holds her breast, cradles it in the palm of his hand, feels it bounce against the palm of his hand

while they fuck in his bed: rather vigorously, athletically.

[Sinclair] It was there in the way she looked at him when she first saw him: hungry, smelling his sweat and seeing his body and flexing her hands on the steering wheel from restraint. And it was there when she kissed him at the door to his building, after racing through the rain and feeling a thrill go through her just because he's here and he wasn't here yesterday, or the day before, and now he is and she likes running with him, likes roughhousing their way through the halls, likes tumbling with him into bed.

There's no foreplay beyond that: beyond racing, beyond running, beyond striving to get their hands and mouths on each other even before they got in the door. But Sinclair's wet, and hot under his hands and his body, and she's rubbing her pussy up and down on his cock while he's bowing over her, stroking it closer and closer to her opening.

Her bra is cotton and lace under his palm when he squeezes her tit through it. The cotten bends to his fingers, the lace scrapes softly on his skin. Sinclair moans loudly into his mouth, her hips rocking with his on top of the bed. She runs her hands all over him, caressing his chest and his sides, holding onto his hips to follow -- and guide, at the same time -- the roll of his thrusts. "Oh," she says, and "oh," again a moment later, heavier this time.

All at once, her body is trying to clutch at him and resist him, make stretching her out a gradual thing but covering him in her slick as though to say yes, yes, yes, yes, fuck, yes. She's unfuckingbelievably tight as he slides into her, even now, her nails digging into him as he pushes deeper. Sinclair's bra is the new one, blue on white, lace on cotton, when he tugs her shirt up and tugs the cups down so he can lick and suck at her nipple. She moans again, closer to a whimper now, arching her back to rub her breast on his face even as he's suckling at her.

The bed creaks on its stand, or thumps against the wall. It isn't because it's old, or rotting, but simply because of the steady, firm pace they're setting, because of the way their bodies slap together again and again and again on top of it. He rubs his sweat on her. She squirms under him and whimpers vowel sounds and plaintive, demanding little cries in his ear. Alex plays with her breast, holds it while he fucks her

and it's a fast, eager fuck, and it's making Sinclair's panting go ragged, hitching every time he bounces her against the mattress. She moans -- still louder, head tipping backward -- as her pussy clenches all around him with involuntary rhythm and need. "Fuck! Fuck, Alex," for no reason, other than to swear and to cry out his name. She takes one hand off of him and reaches down to touch herself, her mouth opening with soundless pleasure now as she rubs her clit.

[Alex Vaughn] There's something reckless and untamed and uncivilized about them: the way they grin, the way they meet in the rain, the way they kiss at the door and slam each other rather unapologetically into walls and doors because they can take it.

They can take it. They're young, healthy animals, redblooded, hotblooded, and even though sometimes she scares him it can't be denied that

she excites him, too. Because she's not tame and pale like human girls; she doesn't coo and giggle and flutter her goddamn lashes; she can whup him in a cage and on an xbox and everywhere in between, and yet for all that he somehow doesn't feel his masculinity and his self-respect threatened by her.

And now they're fucking: twenty minutes after they met, as little as five or ten after she was snarling at the cars around her and the red lights and making him go quiet out of instinctive fear, and this makes no sense to him but that's all right because my fucking god does it feel good. Now they're fucking, and though he goes slow at first, penetrates her gradually and carefully, wary of hurting her, it doesn't stay that way for long. They're going at it hard enough to rock the furniture in a handful of seconds, and she's moaning loud enough to ring off the walls, and he's matching her outcries, wordless and rough, a lower undertone to her voice.

"Yeah," he pants, watching her slide her hand down. "Yeah, that's it, touch it baby, stroke that clit for me. Play with yourself. Yeah," and now he's raising himself on his elbows, reaching to wrap her legs higher around him, giving it to her harder now, faster, their bodies slapping together and his bed thudding against the wall and his lamp shivering on the nightstand as they

quite simply

fuck each other senseless.

At the pace they've set, neither of them will last long. It's all right. He can't bring himself to rein in, slow down. It's been too damn long and they're both eager, starving for it. It's not long before he's up on his hands pistoning his hips into her. It's not long before he's panting, before he's wet with sweat that's never really dried completely and is now slicking his body again. It's not long before he's suddenly coming down over her, all but dropping onto his elbow and his forearm, covering her breast with his hand and holding it as he fucks her, hard and fast now, slapping his body against hers and catching her mouth and

groaning against her lips that he's gonna come, he's gonna come in that tight pussy, yeah, yeah --

His neighbors already know he gets up ridiculously early, that he bangs around the bathroom and hawks and spits in the sink, that he bangs around the kitchen and turns on the blender fullblast in the mornings. That he gets home in the afternoons and bangs on the fucking drums. That he sometimes forgets to turn off the TV when he drops off to sleep at night. Now they can add another noise complaint to the list:

the way he bellows when he comes, roars his pleasure unequivocally and unashamedly, wordlessly as he's coming into her, and then cursing over and over, fuck, fuck, fuck, as he's grinding his cock into her again and again after.

While he kisses her. While he pants for breath. While his hips slowly wind to a stop. He stays inside her, spasming now and then, and his fingers lift from her breast now. He rubs her nipple with the palm of his hand, slowly and luxuriously, and then licks a line down her neck.

Silence for a moment. Then he sits up abruptly, gathering her onto his lap, kneeling on the mattress. "Okay," he pants. "Let's go again."

[Sinclair] Wasn't like this in the car, before she kissed him and he kissed her back and they both believed it. Wasn't like this the last time they were in this bed, when she was exerting effort not to pant for him after he'd undressed her, when she was fighting not to roll him onto his back and crawl on top of him, struggling not to say Alex, please...

In a way, though, it was like this when they slept naked together, twined together. Her leg over his hip, his arm around her waist, their heads nestled together in sleep, breathing the same air, hearts finding the same rhythm.

Which is what it is, in the end, that's missing when it's awkward, when she's angry and he's tense, when they argue. Doesn't matter of the rhythm is slow and steady or if it's trip-hammering like it is now; they find it, meet somewhere between rain and race, and revel in the fact that they can let the fuck go a little with each other because:

they can handle it. Wild, hot-skinned, aroused and energetic animals, more than people.

The condoms that spilled onto the bed when he grabbed the one he's wearing are dancing on the comforter with their jostling, with their madcap dashing for pleasure. Sinclair's head is thrown back, her hand between her thighs, her legs spread on either side of his waist, ankles brushing his flank as he pumps into her the way he does, her breasts bouncing where they're exposed between tugged-down bra, pushed-up shirt, one nipple wet from his mouth. Hard from his mouth. Hard from want, and cool air on wet skin.

She's moaning loudly, her arousal ramped up from weeks of waiting -- another noise complaint, maybe, that if he's going to fuck his girl like that, cover her goddamn mouth at least, for chrissakes, jesus, that wailing -- and weeks of seeing him one damn time, and then just to argue and go to bed together. They're both sweating, catching their mouths against one another, hers staying open to cry out the way she does when her cunt starts to clench around him, when he groans that he's gonna come, he's gonna fucking come, when the words seem to set her off like a light

and she lets go of her pussy and grabs his ass and pulls him hard into her, yelling and gasping pleasure. Their voices drown out the slap of skin, her orgasm set off by his, milliseconds apart, the first time it's been completely mutual, completely together. Sinclair bucks under him, giving out those gasping, whimpery little cries she looses to his ceiling, while they finish off their sudden, backbreaking bout of sex with endless-seeming grinds of their hips together, riding out every last burst of enjoyment.

A little slower, each time. A little harder, with every roll of their bodies against one another. A little slower. An aching, gradual descent towards stillness, though her chest still moves hard with panting breaths, though her shirt is stuck to her skin with sweat, though her hair is a wreck, though she whimpers when he touches her breast and licks her neck.

Sinclair's legs fold around him, and her arms. And she senses the precoiling of muscles before he means to move, and her arms and legs suddenly lock down, tightening to hold him where he is. "No," she pants, clinging for a moment til she's sure he's not going to make her move yet. Not yet. She's still overcome, all but vibrating with the aftermath, holding him as tight and close as she dares. Her hold on him only gentles when she's sure he'll just... just stay.

"Fuck," she says, trailing off into a whimper, when her heartbeat no longer scares her with its speed. She relaxes a little more, eyes closed and face turned towards his cheek, breathing in the scents of new sweat and sex and her that mark him now, obliterating whatever traces were left of his sparring partner. He can feel her loosen, melt, finally go liquid and languid again, and if he moves then -- to sit up on his knees, to roll onto his side or his back -- she moves with him then, and stays close,

and starts kissing him, softer now than before, with her arms looped over his shoulders and her hand playing idly with his hair and her lips caressing his over

and over

and over again.

[Alex Vaughn] So he doesn't surge upright immediately after. He stays where he is, with her, in her, waiting for her to recover enough to let go of her high, to come back down to earth.

And this is down to earth. This is about as down to earth as you can get: a small dingy apartment in lower Cabrini, a ceiling light overhead that's off right now, ratty curtains closed against a dismal grey day. This is a world away from Rio's white sand beaches and lush vegetation, its botanical gardens that had more in common with the garden of eden than your average backyard garden; its nonstop heat and music and rhythm and bloodbeat.

And yet: the awkwardness between them isn't there right now. He's panting against her, smiling against her, warm and enjoying and ... happy. Having a good fucking time.

When she lets him go, he sits back on his heels. He pulls her with him, gathering her warm and liquid on his lap. He doesn't say let's go again. He says mmmmm when she kisses him over and over and over, and his hand gropes blindly on the comforter for another condom while he's other eases her off of him, strips the used condom off and tosses it in the vague direction of the wastebasket by his bed.

Their mouths part only when he tugs her tshirt high enough to pull it over her head. Then he clips the fresh condom packet between his teeth, grinning at her across the vague distance between as he reaches behind her back and unclips her bra. That comes off, too, Alex rubbing the red mark left behind where the bra, twisted out of place, had dug into her skin. Briefly, he ducks to kiss the mark, to touch it with his tongue as if he could heal it.

Then he's just sucking on her tits, the condom packet bunched in one hand, that arm around her; his other hand stroking himself hard again. He goes at her with such avidity that you'd think he hadn't just finished fucking her once already -- all while he rolls a fresh condom on. And then he's urging her to rise up on her knees and take him inside again, murmuring short, vague, coaxing phrases:

come on. that's a girl. oh, god, yeah. put that pussy on me.

[Sinclair] It'd be a lie -- and a badly told one, at that -- if Sinclair claimed that she never wondered if it was just Rio. If Alex's wanting to fuck her that day was more a product of the sun and the luxury and the way she looked in a bikini than anything else. If, now that they're back in Chicago, he's not going to be her friend anymore, not going to want her the way he did in Brazil, not going to feel anything when he looks at her but a sort of amused contempt. Not only did he fuck one of the scariest Garou in Chicago into exhaustion and helpless orgasm, he took her goddamn virginity. That's quite the win.

She wondered. Not in the week between her first visit and Carnival, but afterwards? Almost constantly. And when he didn't want to fuck her when she came to get her stuff, a little. A couple of times. Nervously, maybe even ashamedly, she wondered if whatever spurred him to desire and even tenderness in Rio de Janeiro would fade instantly upon returning to Illinois. At no point did she think it was -- or would be -- deliberate, that Alex had or would go out of his way to manipulate and use her

and hurt her

like that. But she wondered if that feeling that came from nowhere and that he couldn't explain would just... go away.

She isn't wondering now. She's kissing and nuzzling him as he gets his knees under him and gets her on his lap. He shifts inside of her and she shudders at first, squirms as her arms coil tighter around him and her kisses deepen for a few moments. Sinclair doesn't resist when he eases her up off his cock; she lifts her hips and lets him slide out of her, rubs gently against his abdomen while he's taking off his condom. She distracts him with kisses, all the while, but flows with him:

her arms go up as he peels off her shirt. Lower again. Her shoulders lift as he unclasps her bra and draws it down her arms, tosses it aside as well. They're both naked now but for the socks on their feet, the little red and blue elastic bands at the ends of her braids. Clothes are everywhere, strewn about his room wherever they happened to land. She hears him go for another condom and hears the rustle of foil, laughing softly into his mouth when she presses their lips together again. Sinclair tastes his mouth, lapping gently at his tongue, and then lets him go.

She watches, smiling, as he caresses and nuzzles and then begins licking her breasts, starting with the harsh impressions left by Lycra and underwire then moving to the swelling curve of one, the hard and steel-pierced nipple of the other. Her expression is fond, though her breathing never quite completely settled and is now escalating again. When Alex pulls her breast into his mouth to suck on her, Sinclair's breathing hitches and her hands go to his shoulders. She looks down between them, at his hand jerking on his cock, and shudders. "Oh, my fuck," she exhales, and starts to move before he starts to urge her to.

Because she wants him. And because it's so obvious that he wants her, and because neither of them are saying it now but it's also obvious that they missed this, missed each other, missed

"Oh, god, Alex, that feels good," she groans, sliding down on him far easier than the first time (the seventh time), holding onto his shoulders for balance and arching her back as she takes him in. "Oh god... oh god..."

[Alex Vaughn] "Oh, yeah," he's sighing as she's moaning to a god she doesn't really believe in. Their voices form a curious counterpoint, a sort of dissonant harmony that reminds him, vaguely, of wolves howling; animals calling.

He leans back as she sinks down on him. His knuckles plant on the mattress somewhere past his feet; his hip joint opens, and his shoulders, his thighs and torso stretching and aligning. If she's still holding onto his shoulders, she's leaning into him now, and his arms are taut against the combined weight of their upper bodies. Alex's head falls back briefly when she's taken all of him inside; he groans again, aloud, loudly.

"Fuck!" There's another noise complaint. "Yeah."

Then he raises his head. Catches her mouth and kisses her fiercely, close-eyed, furrow-browed, as he starts thrusting into her: slow, hard rolls of his hips up into hers, each one hard enough to make him pant an exhale. After a while the kiss falls apart. Some distance reinstates itself between them; enough for him to see her, and enough to find her eyes and hold them.

He's not laughing now. This has turned into something intense, primal. She can see pleasure flashing across his face on every thrust. He pushes off his hands, flexes forward, wraps his arms around her. He takes her by the hips, by the waist, guides to her start riding against his thrusts, groaning when she does, leaning forward to nip and suck at her neck, to bend her back over his arms to go at her breasts again.

The sound he makes then is a growl, low and pleased. "God I love your tits," he gasps -- barely has time to get it all out before his mouth is back on her.

[Sinclair] Maybe later they actually will shower and go get a burger at Islands. Replenish after a workout. He's seen how quickly and how much Sinclair can eat after getting thoroughly worn out, how calm and satiated she is afterward, how... mellow she can be, all told, when she's drowsy from orgasm and food and idly -- lazily, with that predatory glint still in her eyes -- contemplating more of one, or the other, or both. She'll want a milkshake. Chocolate.

Right now she wants Alex. Has wanted him since the first time she saw glimmers of inner strength, a reserve of willpower, a well of audacity that had him mouthing off to Garou when he felt like it, grabbing her arm because it occurred to him to do so. It's his smell, and it's his body, and it's his drive to push himself. It's his fitness, his agile mind to match his defiant backbone and the above-average sleekness and efficiency of his musculature. It's his competitiveness, his playfulness, and the curve of his lips and the sometimes surprising warmth in his eyes.

And at this very moment, it's how hard he is inside of her, how hard he fucks her, how hard he kisses her.

Sinclair runs her hands all over him when he leans back the way he does, all but purring as she follows the lines of his body with her hand, leaning forward to get closer to him again. She licks his throat when he throws his head back, grinding her cunt down onto him again. "Yeah," she mutters, planting her palm on his pectoral muscle and lifting herself up only to slide back down, wind in circles on his lap, feeling his thigh muscles flex beneath her. "Oh fuck, yeah..."

Meaningless, the shit that comes out of their mouth now. Sounds of affirmation, of encouragement, of reward, of agreement: yes. that's it. there you go.. Sounds of savagery, demand, overwhelming sensation: fuck. shit. fucking hell, that's it. Sounds of blasphemy and worship both, helplessness, pleading: oh god. oh my god. oh my fucking god.

Not so meaningless, maybe.

They roll together, shift, and Sinclair puts her arm around his neck while he puts his arms around her waist and urges her with flexes of his forearms and grasps of his hands to ride him, faster now, fuck yeah, that's it, just like that. When she arches her back, she does so with a dancer's grace, her spine elongating, flowing backward, bending her to his mouth, which comes down over her moving, bouncing flesh. She barely even comprehends what he says, other than that it's pleasured, that it's pleased, that he likes her body and wants to adore it with his hands and mouth, which makes her

pleasured, and pleased, and adoring. She whimpers, rolling her hips and starting to go a little faster on him, lifting her body back up to gain the leverage necessary to just ...fuck him, now, as eager and energetic as though they hadn't just tumbled into bed and fucked the hell out of each other mere minutes ago.

But it's been a long time. And she loves -- does not just enjoy, does not just have neutral-to-positive feelings about, loves -- coming on his cock, which is what she tells him a minute later, ten minutes later, when the lingering sparks of pleasure from their last round start to catch and ignite into something entirely new.

"Ah... ah... ah fuck, Alex. Fuck, baby, I'm gonna come on you again," Sinclair all but wails, writhing her body nearer to his, holding tighter, getting closer, her hips bouncing softly...but faster, every time, faster. "I'm gonna come on that hard fucking cock."

[Alex Vaughn] It's a longer, slower bout this time. Which isn't to say it's slow, because it's not. She rides him and he bounces her on his lap and they're just as fucking athletic about it, just as energetic and eager about it as they were the first time. But -- the winding of her hips, a little slower. The rolling of his body, a little more considered, deliberate, moving up against her with his mouth on her tits and his arms around her, or

with his hand on the bed and his hand on her ass, or

leaning back, her riding him, her hands on his chest, or

leaning her back, fucking her almost with her laid out on the mattress, before

they come together again, colliding upright like that, him kneeling on the bed and her straddling his lap, wrapping their arms around each other and grinding against each other on and on and on while she starts to go faster on him, starts to bounce on his cock, and while he grabs at her hips and urges her to go faster, go harder, to fuck him just like that while his mouth opens against her neck to muffle incoherent, ragged moans against her throat.

"Come for me." That's almost a whisper, a panting, stripped thing -- chased by a gasp, then by a laugh. "Oh, fuck, yeah, come for me, baby. Come on that cock. Ride it for me, come on my hard cock, don't stop, that's it -- that's it -- oh, fuck, fuck -- "

No words after all. He really is incoherent after that, grabbing at her hips, slapping her ass and biting her shoulder with the sheer need to express some measure of the pleasure taking over him, shouting open-throatedly and utterly unabashedly as he pulls her down against his last upward thrust, goes rigid, becomes a singular arc of tension and locked musculature, comes.

After that he's fucking lightheaded.

After that, he's panting for breath and literally seeing stars, lightheaded, leaning heavily against her until he simply wraps his arms around her and tumbles sideways onto the mattress with her. "Oh my fucking god," he pants. "I need a defibrillator."

[Sinclair] Maybe if they have sex three, four times, they'll lie down together in bed and he'll rock slowly into her and she'll hold to him and pant softly and they'll fuck in such a way that there are no noise complaints. Maybe if she wakes him up in the middle of the night the way she did in Rio and whispers that she wants more, they'll stay under the covers where it's warm and he'll fumble for a condom on top of the bedspread and she'll turn her head to the side on his pillow and open her mouth against it as she moans.

Maybe. It doesn't really matter, and Sinclair doesn't care. She and he are sweating, and that is good. She and he are groaning, gasping, grabbing at each other as they fuck, and that's good, too. She and he are coming together, again, and that is...

"So fucking good," Sinclair moans, gasping when he slaps his hand on her ass, bucking her hips to urge him to thrust up into her harder, faster, more. "That's so fucking good, oh my god!"

'That' being... the sex. His cock. His hands on her, his mouth, the rhythm he sets as he meets the way she rides him with upward flexes of his hips. They're wound about each other now, her legs on either side of his thighs, their bellies and their chests pressed together, her arms around him and keeping him close, his head tucked against her neck, his arms tight around her waist. Sinclair is hot and alive on top of him, squirming as she pants out:

"Fuck, I'm so hot. You make me so fucking hot..."

Her body makes demands of him, her cunt squeezing at him when she slides down onto it and pulsing around him when she starts to lift her hips and then he's muttering in her ear to come, come on him, ride that fucking --

Sinclair buckles on top of him, folding over his shoulder, moaning loudly past his scapula, bouncing rather wantonly -- helplessly, achingly -- on his cock, until he's biting down and her eyes are flashing open, her hands on his back suddenly digging in, fingernails grasping at his flesh and dragging downward as her orgasm takes her, as his takes him, as

they fall over the edge together, their pleasure tight and hard and searing.

He sees stars. Sinclair's vision blurs over his shoulder. She hasn't cut him, but she checks, her eyes rolling sleepily downward to make sure she didn't slice open his back. She closes them and exhales, which helps make the room stop spinning. She holds onto him, and does not let go when he tumbles downward, doesn't let go when they settle on their sides. She keeps her leg around him, folding him in between her thighs, keeping him in her body and against it. She keeps her arms around his chest, and buries her face there.

At what he says, she exhales with a little hitch that might be laughter, and licks his chest before settling again, with a sort of animal contentment mingled with the relief and satisfaction of a very human girl.

"I am so, so fucking sore," she says after a moment, chuckle-groaning the words.

[Alex Vaughn] His back stings faintly where she scratched him, though her nails never broke the skin. Various parts of him will ache tomorrow, and not just because he got through a bout of sparring at the gym. There's a cut over his eye, but Sinclair knows Alexander's pain tolerance is higher than that of your average human being. His athleticism is more extreme, his guts made of sterner stuff.

All that attracted her to him. It's a form of strength, all of it, and a sort of blunt honesty, even if all of it is ultimately rooted in a sort of weakness. In a sort of insecurity that drives him to always win, even if there isn't a goddamn war.

Except: with her. Alex hasn't really tried very hard to win against Sinclair since ... well. Since she kicked his ass at Soul Calibur and boozing, really. If he had to pin it down, he might attribute it to finding himself in his bed the next morning with an offer for a rematch on the nightstand. If she'd gloated, he might've hated her for it. If she'd never offered a rematch again out of pity, he would've definitely hated her for it, trivial as it is ultimately.

Or -- he might attribute it to the night she and Marrick squared off. Not because she fought for his honor or some such shit, and not because he saw her momentarily weakened, vulnerable: but because that was the first time he had the faintest inkling that Sinclair, of all people -- transparent, vicious Sinclair -- actually understood him on a level that Marrick and all the others never would.

Understood that he wasn't a goddamn bad boy looking for a good girl to reform him. Understood that he wasn't a villain and a rapist in the making either. Understood that he had neither a heart of gold nor a heart of black iron. Understood his frailties and didn't judge them, or exploit them. Saw his strengths and didn't put him up on a pedestal for it.

The truth is: Alexander is a selfish man. And the truth is: Alexander is fit in the most basic, biological sense. He's a survivor who knows how to survive. Who knows nothing's ever handed to you. You have to take it. And sometimes you reach too far, and then you accept what's coming to you. But other times, you get away with it.

Perhaps none of that really explains why he was gentle with her the first time. Nor why, when she says she's so, so fucking sore, he props himself up on an elbow and strokes his hand over her cheek, idly works her braid loose, and is gentle now, too. But that's part of it too: he doesn't have to explain that. She isn't constantly asking why, why, how, why. She isn't constantly fabricating preconceptions that he has to work to undo.

She's the one that said it first: I can be myself. Which is a rare thing, strangely enough, even for creatures so bold and transparent as they.

"You gonna be all right?" he asks: his tone says he knows she will be; he asks anyway, quietly.

[Sinclair] For all that they were just rough with each other, unapologetically slamming each other into walls and doors and racing up stairs and throwing each other around and fucking like they did, they're conversely tender now. Sinclair is kissing and licking his chest, nuzzling his neck and shoulder, stroking his back lightly, avoiding the spots where she scratched him, where her nails left bright red weals on his darkly tanned skin.

Which is lightening, day by day, the tan from Rio fading slowly. Ever so slowly. He'll probably never look like a native Chicagoan, all wintry pale and starved for vitamin D.

She rubs her foot softly on the back of his thigh, sighing as they lie there. She turns her head as he props himself up and looks at him, following him with her eyes as though making sure he's not getting up and leaving, though the rest of him makes no motion to exit the bed, or her embrace. Her hair is fine and soft and comes out of one braid easily when he tugs on the band to take it off. Which leaves another braid, but that's pressed to the pillow. Her hair is kinked when it spreads out, wavy from being plaited.

Her arms stay around his waist. And he asks what he does, and her mouth quirks in a small, soft, lopsided way. "Yeah," she says, barely above a whisper. "I kinda like it. Like... my body remembers you."

[Alex Vaughn] Or at least -- he's not gonna let himself look like that. Every time he catches his tan fading, he'll run somewhere southern. It's like a built-in alarm clock. IF: skin pale, THEN: go south.

For now, though, he's still tanned. So is she, really. They're both tanned and athletic, glistening with sweat, sprawled together, entwined.

He strokes his fingers through her hair gently, idly, undoing her braid as they lie there. She smiles a little. He leans down and kisses that lopsided little smile, closing his eyes.

"I like that," he says softly. "Your body remembers me."

His hand drifts from her hair. He runs his hand down her arm, then up again. He cups his hand over her breast, then looks at her. Laughter glints in his eyes. "Are you gonna tell me about the nipple ring now, or am I going to have to wait another three weeks?"

[Sinclair] "I like it, too," Sinclair murmurs back, though she just said this. Her meaning is different, though: she likes that she's kind of sore, because it reminds her of him fucking her, reminds her of fucking him. But she also likes the thought of it, that her body remembers him deep down in her musculature. Deep down, period, though she has no concept of what it feels like to be in contact with one's ancestors, no idea how it might feel to be connected to history like that.

All she has is this life. This mind. This body. And she likes the thought that it knows his. She also likes that she can say so. They roll slightly on the bed, he shifting his weight back and Sinclair following, curling to rest her head on his bicep, to be within nuzzling distance of his chest. She closes her eyes as he undoes her second braid, as her hair comes loose and soft and cool around his fingertips.

She breathes more steadily as he touches her, eyelids flickering but not opening when he cups her breast. Then his chest moves with almost-voiced laughter and she opens one eye, peering up at him, and smiles. Her hand comes up and takes his off his breast, bringing it to her mouth so she can kiss his palm, grinning.

"Ah..." hesitance. Or something like it. Color is high in her cheeks anyway, her entire body a little flushed from heat and sex. She lets his hand go and smiles up at him, and it's hard to tell if she's blushing further. "It was like four. But you don't have to wait. It's just kind of hard to explain."

So she gets closer: puts her arms around his waist again, holds him, lounges in a tangle of arms and legs on top of his bed while the day gets darker and colder outside, the rain still drizzling downward. "It'll make more sense if I tell you about my back piece first, though," she says, her voice dropping a bit in tone and cadence, becoming slow and undulating, rhythmic.

"When I was younger, I was... really pretty girly. At least to a degree. I mean, my dad bought me a car and taught me about taking care of it while we were fixing it up so I could drive it. I was in like seven thousand sports. Went to leadership camp and held student office and all that shit. Taught myself how to program at home. But I was also... I don't know. I was a cheerleader."

She laughs at herself saying that as a summary, an explanation: "I was really pretty, and I liked going shopping and flirting and all that. It was just part of who I was, y'know? I loved all that shit. I liked being a girl." She leaves some parts out, here; there's a gap in her telling before she takes a breath and says: "And then I changed. And I know this might sound really... stupid, but for awhile at first I didn't have a clue what I was. Like... it's not like I thought I was suddenly masculine or whatever, because of my rage or what I could do. It's just that I didn't feel like the same person, and I didn't know how to ... be a girl, I guess. And I kind of acted genderless and asexual for awhile, but deep down it just sucked, like a part of me had gotten torn out."

She breathes in, shrugging. "Anyway. There was a series of events that led up to the backpiece. This one fire I went to, and stuff people were doing there. A storm I saw. A bunch of little things all seeming to give the same message. And that was..."

Her brow furrows as she finds words for this. "Basically... that violence and power aren't necessarily ugly, and that blood and pain survival and endurance are part of what's feminine, and that ..."

A laugh. Her brow is still wrinkled, her eyes finding his almost nervously. She shrugs. "I can be a monster and still think flowers and butterflies are really pretty. So I designed it with Colfax and we did this whole kinda... ritual to it. All the pain and blood, and all the creation of it, and when all the marks healed into scars I felt like I'd taken back what I felt changing had torn away."

[Alex Vaughn] She says she was really pretty girly -- his reaction is a laugh, though it's hard to say if he's laughing because he thinks it's ludicrous or because he thinks it's obvious.

"I can see that," he says quietly. The latter, then. His hand runs down her side, rides her hip. He leans forward, down, kisses her lips softly as she's saying I kind of acted genderless and asexual, pulls back when she says had gotten torn out.

Alex listens, then, lying on his side while Sinclair lies on hers. They face each other across his rumpled unmade bed, her leg still over his waist, his hand draped over her side, thumb running gently over the scarification on her back that she explains now.

When she's finished, he smiles. That unexpected warmth is there again: in his eyes, in his smile. He leans forward and kisses her again, even softer, slower.

"Like giving birth to yourself again," he says, and laughs quietly. "Butterflies and flowers and little pink panties and all."

[Sinclair] Sometimes it's easy to see: even now, Sinclair applies her makeup -- which is harsh and made to intensify her otherwise gentle appearance -- with a deft and practiced hand, with balance, without making herself look like a mongrel or a goth. She paints her nails and her toes. She drinks bright blue Hpnotiq, not whiskey or vodka shots. She also drinks appletinis. Because they are so very tasty, you see. The first bra he took off of her was pale pink with little flowers on it. The one flung across his room has roses in the blue lace over the cups.

It's harder to see Sinclair as girly when she's covered in blood, or sparring with her packmate with axes. Harder to see when anger flashes in her eyes, when instinct seems to overtake reason.

Her eyes fall closed for a moment when he kisses her, and that, too -- that softness she has sometimes, that sweetness -- would also normally be called feminine, girly, because the terms are associated with weakness, and it's hard to imagine someone who can tear your throat out in an eyeblink of temper being weak. Gentle. Nurturing and tender, the way Sinclair sometimes is, seemingly out of nowhere, always by surprise, always so utterly naturally, all the same.

"Sort of," she tells him, as he strokes the scars on her back, smiling faintly. "Though I think childbirth probably hurts more than this did. It's more... I felt like changing hurt something precious to me. Wounded me." She pauses there, because she's admitting weakness. She's admitting: it hurt, for awhile, when I learned that everything I knew about myself was wrong, and that I would never be the same, and everything I thought was going to happen was lost.

"And now it's healed, but I'm still different from it." Hence: scars. A marking. Here I am. Here is what I've become. Here is what I've reclaimed, regained, salvaged. Here is what I have survived: the fear of losing myself. "And birds," she adds to his recitation of flowers, butterflies, pink panties, smiling as his fingers blindly pass over a swallow; she knows where it is, that singing avian etched into her flesh.

"Anyway," Sinclair goes on, whispering after he kisses her again, holding him lazily and comfortably, the heat of her rage suffusing the room even as the heat of sex begins to fade, "that sort of ties into why I pierced my nipple. Long story short, it was sort of the same deal. Even before I changed, people started pulling away from me. I freaked them out. It hurt when I lost friends, and it sucked when guys I'd be fooling around with would spaz out because I bit them or got ...I don't know. Too excited. Too intense."

This time it's a rather long pause. Sinclair is lying in such a way that she stares at his chest, imagines his heart underneath the tanned skin, watches it move almost imperceptibly as he breathes. "And after I changed, it was like... that part of me really was gone, for awhile. I couldn't feel anything but rage for a long time. I never really felt 'hungry' or 'horny' or 'sad' or anything, really. I just wanted to tear everything to fucking pieces.

"After the Walkers finally let me go and I had my name and everything, though, I'd kinda settled down. But I was surrounded by Garou. Mortals wouldn't come near me. Kin generally held back, even the pretty chill ones. Even the ones who were pretty tough, they just..."

It takes her a moment to get over the stab of pathetic she feels shoot through her when she wants to finish that sentence. It takes her a moment, but then she inhales and just breathes out: "Nobody would ever even touch me. Not, y'know. More than incidentally, or unnecessarily. For awhile I was like 'okay, that's it, then; that's one more thing I can't have, now'." Sex, she means. Maybe.

"It took a lot longer for me to get over that. And it wasn't because anybody suddenly started giving me hugs or whatever. I just started working through it." The way she works through a lot of things: mostly in her own head. Mostly on her own time. Mostly quietly, below the surface, which is perhaps a bit unexpected, given that she's so... out there, in so many other ways. Sinclair strokes her fingertips up and down his spine, slowly, aimlessly. Luxuriously, because that's what this is: a luxury.

That's what he is. Unnecessary. Unexpected.

"So one night it's the middle of summer and I drive out to the middle of the fucking desert and I got naked on the ground and got myself off like six times or something, it was insane. It stormed afterward. I pierced my nipple after the rain got all the dust and everything off of me. And when I went back to the city, I still wasn't getting touched and I still wasn't getting fucked -- obviously -- but I didn't feel asexual anymore."

And then there it is. She did that one to herself. And that, with her backpiece, though she'll bare them rather easily and even a bit proudly, are symbols and rituals of her sex, her sexuality, parts of her intimate and engimatic and

Sinclair smiles then, to herself, watching his chest still. "So it made me really happy, when you said you thought it was hot. And when you couldn't keep your fucking mouth off of it."

[Sinclair] [Cut that hanging 'and'!]

[Sinclair] [Okay fine leave it. *dies*]

[Alex Vaughn] Alex listens quietly to the rest of it. Their hands move over each other, explore, caress, touch, linger. Once or twice, he could almost feel the tension in her; the latent ... what? Humiliation; embarrassment; shame?

He doesn't gather her close. He does, however, stroke her gently as she tells him nobody would ever even touch her. When she tells him without telling him what a luxury it is to be touched like this. To touch like this. He strokes her back, and rubs her spine, and shifts just a little closer to her. Between her legs. Against her body.

They're well matched like this. There isn't much height difference between them. He might have a little more muscle mass simply by virtue of being male, of having testosterone, of plain sexual dimorphism. She's a little quicker. His hair is darker, and her eyes are lighter, but --

healthy young athletic animals, both.

When she's finished, the corners of that mouth he couldn't keep off her nipple ring flit up. He laughs, and then, as though reminded, he leans down to catch her nipple ring on the tip of his tongue. To close his mouth over her breast and close his eyes and suck, gently, lingeringly, warmly for a moment.

When he lets go, he rolls her gently on her back. He sprawls half atop her, easing out of her now, resting his head on her chest. His hand comes up to cover her breast, his saliva wet against his palm.

"I understand that," he says softly. "What you said about feeling like part of you was just gone after you changed. I mean ... it's different, obviously, because I never did change. But I get it. That sort of loss."

There's a pause. He caresses her breast, rubs his palm over her nipple, squeezes ever so gently with his fingers, his palm. After a while, his hand moves down, spreads over her ribs. It surprises him sometimes to feel how narrow her build is; how ... yeah. Girly. Feminine. Slender.

"My brother's my twin," he continues after a while. "We look just like each other but we're nothing alike. He was always the quiet one. Shy. Scared of everything when we were kids. So of course I was the brave one, the loud one, the popular one. I don't know if that was just us or if I was making up for him or if one kinda fed the other, but...

"Anyway, everyone figured if only one of us Changed, it'd be me. I mean. It only makes sense, right? I was the conqueror," his voice is quiet and wry, "and he was the priest."

He turns his head, kisses her between her breasts, over her heart.

"Weird thing is I never really hoped I'd be the Garou and he'd be the kin. That's not really how it worked for me. I guess in my mind we'd always be together. If we were kin we were both kin. I'd watch out for him because he's my brother and he's a wimpy little shit. If we were Garou we were both Garou. I'd be his alpha but ... I'd still watch out for him. Because he's my brother.

"'Course that's not how it turned out. And for a long time ... hell, sometimes even now -- it was like something got taken away. Like, what do you mean, only one of us is Garou? That was never how I saw it working out. That wasn't how it was gonna be in my head.

"And yeah." This, after a short pause, a breath. "If I had to be totally honest, yeah, sometimes I'm still wondering what the fuck, gaia, did you mess it up or something? Aaron the big bad wolf -- what? Aaron couldn't even get a girlfriend. He was the kid in the back of the class with his nose in a book. He was the kid whose glasses kept falling off his face because the leg was broken and he just superglued it." Alex laughs, short and ironic. "But there you go. That's how it turned out.

"And ... yeah. It was like a wound for a long time. Still a bruise, I guess."

[Sinclair] All of Sinclair's body is deceptive, in a way -- which is ironic, given that she's otherwise so very transparent about what she is, about what she thinks. The way she makes herself up and dresses make her seem harder than she is. The tattoos and piercings conceal their meaning to almost anyone but her. She's so slender, the curves of her waist and hips and breasts so smooth, and yet when she flexes a certain way, when she wraps herself around him and holds him tightly, the actual strength in her form reveals itself.

Then there's the spirit she's currently unable to reach, the totem she's cut off from because of two of the biggest idiots she's ever met. At least, that's how she'd refer to them, at this point. When Perun is with her, though, when the moon is in her phase, Sinclair is nigh unto unstoppable.

She has a nice body. As does he. Firm, smooth-skinned, well-formed, the both of them. Her hair is silken and his shoulders are broad and she likes being like this with him. Lying in bed, lazing but not drowsing, touching and being touched. He's still inside of her, so all through this conversation there's an undeniable and inevitable intimacy. It lingers. Their hearts find the same rhythm, though it's slower now.

Sinclair laughs when he ducks his head to suck and lick at her breast again, when he adores her piercing with his mouth, flicking it with his tongue before he melts into kissing her nipple. She breathes more deeply, and rolls easily when he moves with her, smiles lopsidedly though her eyes flicker and her brow almost furrows as though in ache or in thought when he slips from within her. As though to compensate, she wraps her arms around him and strokes his hair as he lays down on her.

And talks.

He can hear her heartbeat like this, almost feel it. He can feel her chest rise and fall with each cycle of breath. And Sinclair feels... something that touches her deeply, fulfills her as much as the sex itself, maybe more. Just because he's laying his head down on her chest and letting her hold him there, letting her listen to him.

"Your brother," she murmurs, barely above a whisper because they're too close to necessitate anything else, after he says that sort of loss.

And Alex goes on, and that's what it is: his brother. His twin. Aaron, with no tattoos and with a rank in the Nation. Aaron the Philodox, who used to be a scaredy-cat that relied on his twin brother to watch out for him, speak for him, do the things that he could not, was scared to do...whatever. Sinclair didn't have any siblings growing up. She's not about to compare what that might have felt like to what it feels like to be bound to a pack. Apples and oranges.

Her mouth flickers into a nearly-sad smile when he kisses her where he does, the way he does. But she's quiet, now, just listening. And it's worse, somehow, than if he'd thought that Aaron would be his Kin and he'd Change. That would just be bitterness. This is different, this thought of togetherness, sameness, and now --

it's not really bitterness. It's just pain. And it makes her insides tighten up with unexpected empathy, because: there you go. That's how it turned out. She's not ever going to run for office or get married and argue about who makes more money and hang out with her kids or have some obscenely successful career in the human world. She's not going to be normal. And Aaron's always going to be Garou. And Alex isn't.

"Like a broken bone," she says quietly, after a long while, still stroking his hair in untidy circles. A few inches from where they lay, an elastic hairband of hers lies twisted into a figure 8 on top of an unopened condom. "Hurts when the weather changes."

[Alex Vaughn] She can feel him smile against her skin, though it's really not quite humor. Something closer to wisdom: aching and mined out of hard experience. He kisses her again, the swell of her breast this time, turning his head ever so slightly to press his mouth to her.

"Yeah. Just like that."

He's quiet, then. He could go on. Could tell her how he was proud of his brother, really. And how they still are close. How it's not the same, and how it still hurts when the weather changes, but the bone really is mended, see. Just like how she'll never be the same again, will never have the husband and career and house and 2.4 kids and dog; but she has something else now. Mended, with elaborate scars to show for it.

But he doesn't. She gets it. And loudmouthed as he is -- loud, because his brother is quiet, and that's how it is -- he doesn't actually feel the need to speak unnecessarily.

Alex reaches out with one lazy, explorative hand. Picks up the elastic and snaps it around his wrist, like a kid's friendship bracelet.

"Hey," he says after a while, and then he moves, raising himself on his elbows, scooting up a little so they're face to face. The day's turned to evening by now. His face is shadows and planes; warmth in his eyes. "Why don't you stay the night? After we shower and get burgers and all, I mean."

[Sinclair] This is why they're doing this: fucking exclusively, hanging out, putting up with his assholery and her nature, whatever. Because when they get right down to it, there's an understanding between them. He doesn't have to spell out for her any more than the two of them already have what he means, how it feels; she doesn't try, really, to compare one loss to the other. They aren't the same, and they don't need to be. She gets it. So does he.

They just lie together for awhile, sprawled and tangled on the bed, Alex idly caressing her here and there, Sinclair stroking his hair with hypnotic slowness. She tracks his hand with her eyes when it leaves her, follows it back as he plays with the little band that was around her braid. It makes her smile, watching him. Makes her smile, just... being here.

So when he lifts himself up and raises his body up and she nestles down in the pillows and grins lazily up at him. After they shower the kink and wave will be gone from her hair; she might braid it again, or just pull it back. She doesn't have makeup with her. Doesn't have anything with her, really, but the clothes he yanked off of her and whatever it is she stows in her car. When they go out for burgers, she'll throw on a hoodie from behind the driver's seat and look relatively normal when no one can see anything but the piercings in her ears and the ink on her neck.

She'll definitely get a chocolate milkshake. And sit next to him.

Sinclair nods a couple of times. "I'd like that," she says quietly, and she means: I was hoping to.. Just as quiet: "Will you fuck me again?"

[Alex Vaughn] And he'll get a strawberry milkshake. And blow bubbles in it with his straw. And tell her how he used to do that with cartons of milk in grade school and call it a volcano. Milk volcano! Chocolate volcano! And all the other kids would laugh, and they'd all think he was awesome, and the truth is Alex has charisma; always had it. Every asshole has some level of charisma. Part and parcel.

He's not really an asshole, though. At least: not all asshole. No one is. And they're different here. Or maybe: they can show themselves here, more easily than they can ... just about anywhere else.

He grins, brief and sudden. Then he leans down and kisses her. Smooches her, really, quick and playful.

"I'd like that," Alex replies.

[Sinclair] Her lips catch at his when he lowers his head to kiss her mouth. Sinclair deepens it, but slowly. So slowly, first smooching him back, then parting her lips a little, breathing softly over him, and then just...

kissing him. Warm and full and languid, loosing a faintly voiced sigh into it. And he might wonder how she ever thought herself sexless, unsexual, or how he ever could have, because it might occur to him that she didn't necessarily just mean when we shower or when we get back, though she very well might have meant those things at first.

Will you fuck me again? she said, and now she's sliding her hands down his body, her still-opened legs moving gently up and down the outer sides of his legs and hips, which causes her hips to move under him just a little, rocking gently.

It's becoming less difficult to see how her sexual appetite might have scared a bunch of high school boys off.

[Alex Vaughn] "Mm," Alex murmurs into that deepening, unfurling kiss. "Mmm."

And she's opening her legs to him again. Sliding them up his body. And he's shifting over her, sliding over her until he's between her thighs and over her torso and they're pressed together and she can feel how he's hardening again, responding to her nearness and her mouth and her body and -- plainly put -- her sheer eagerness.

"Oh," he whispers, grinning, as the kiss parts, "you meant right now."

He forgets about the hair elastic he snapped around his wrist idly. He reaches for the condom under it instead.

[Sinclair] A nod, then, a couple of quick bobs of her head as she's breathing more quickly, and in between one kiss and the next. Her eyes are closing, her hands going to his arms to stroke over them because she likes them and it feels really good to touch him like this. "And later," Sinclair murmurs, a half-gasped little collection of syllables that dissolves into a quiet panting.

Her legs fold around his waist, ankles crossing over the small of his back even though they both know he needs room to move, room to roll the condom on. They're not going to make it out of his apartment for some time, and they'll both be sore as fuck by that time -- from his workout, from their fucking, from going at each other over and over and over in his bed when the original idea was just to head to Islands and get a couple of burgers.

Fuck the original plan, though. As soon as they started kissing. As soon as they got their hands on each other. As soon as the understanding passed wordlessly between them that they needed this, missed it.

Sinclair moans when his bare, hardening cock rubs against her cunt. She shudders against him, wanton as an animal in heat, filling his room with sounds that mean nothing but I want. I want. Now.

[Alex Vaughn] So:

they go at it again. They fuck again, a little slower this time out of sheer overload, keeping each other close, holding each other wrapped up in arms and legs, mouths open, eyes closed, kissing, moaning.

They rumple his sheets more. One of his pillows ends up on the floor. Her hair spills off the side of the bed at one point. He curls over her at one point, sucking on her breasts as he fucks her, gasping that he loves her fucking tits, he loves that fucking piercing, it blows his fucking mind, fuck.

Afterward they're almost too tired to move. He is, anyway. He sprawls panting for minutes on end, and what finally gets him moving

is the long growl of his stomach, which makes her laugh, which makes him thump her with a pillow, which makes her wallop him back. They tumble out of bed, then. They stand in the shower together, wet and soapy and grinning, kissing, reaching for each other before long, reaching down to get each other just one more time, a quick, hard little orgasm for her with her leaning back against him; and then her returning the favor, his hands on the tile wall that she leans against, his brow against hers and his eyes closed and his body all but pressing to hers as he tells her:

like that. a little faster. that's it. don't be afraid, baby, go a little tighter -- oh god. yeah. don't stop.

until she gets him off; until he clenches his fists against the tile and groans mindlessly, helplessly, pumping his cock into her hand.

Afterward, he gets dressed: throws on jeans and a t-shirt and a thin fitted sweatshirt and then a winter jacket. He looks surprised when she looks like she's going out in what she came in with, and tosses her another one of his jackets. He comes from Miami, but he did go to school in Boston; he has his fair share of winter gear. Out the door, then, locking it behind him, walking past his neighbors' door with his neighbors inside probably cursing his name -- down four flights of stairs, jogging, his hand reaching for hers halfway down. He grins at her as they hit ground floor.

We'll take your car, he says. The temperature keeps flirting with freezing, and it keeps raining, and the rain keeps freezing and the roads are too treacherous for two wheels. Islands is about five minutes down the main thoroughfare toward River North, away from the projects in Cabrini, toward the lights of the city.

It's a weeknight; not much of a wait. The greeter smiles at them with a daw, so cute smile; she assumes they're a couple, that this is a date. She also thinks Sinclair is a crazy bitch and that someday Alexander will come home to find his bunny boiled, but that's neither here nor there. They get a booth near the back, the restaurant dark and pseudohawaiian in its decor. The menus are shaped like surfboards. They slide in next to each other. Alexander flips through his with great concentration, his thumb playing with his lower lip absently as he examines his choices.

"I'm so getting something with bacon," he says. "And like, three patties. I think I earned the right to stuff my arteries."

[Sinclair] A little slower, each time, as their energy gradually depletes. As that tension of akwardness vanishes again, utterly. And yet it's no less exuberant, no less loud. They roll on his bed, Alex pushing her leg up around him and muttering filthy things into the air while he watches her breasts bouncing from the force of his thrusts. They end up turned diagonally, almost sideways, her head right at the edge and her hands grasping at his back and her moaning filling his ears, wordless and overcome.

He turns her over, or she wriggles away and starts to and he grabs her and pulls her back under him and fucks her, harder now because they're both getting close, because she's clutching at his sheets and he's telling her that cunt is so fucking tight

god it's so fucking sweet

and she's just begging fuck me, fuck me, ohh fuck don't stop, don't fucking stop

and his neighbors are wondering when the hell they're going to. Christ.

But when they come, she hard and long and throwing her hips against him as wave after wave of mindblown pleasure hits her, he gasping and opening his mouth to her shoulder to just yell from the force of it, they've turned again, his cock in and out of her over and again this round, and Sinclair's on her back again and he's between her thighs again and they're holding each other, keeping each other close, wrapped up

and closing their eyes, and kissing each other's moans, and they're so far gone afterward that Alex's stomach growling like it does actually stirs Sinclair from near-sleep. She's drowsing with him in the utterly wrecked bed, satiated and relaxed and content until he wakes her with his hunger, and yes. She laughs, eyes closed and mouth open and tipping her head back with a sudden burst of amusement. They tussle. She nips at his jawline, licks his earlobe, plays, and he doesn't jerk away in abrupt panic, which makes her feel...

warm.

--

The shower feels amazing. Sinclair likes the blasting hot water, and hogs it, til she notices his nipples are hard from being left out in the cold, and then she pulls him closer under the spray. Covers his chest with her hands. Strokes his pectorals with her palms. Breathes in deeply, exhales slowly, and stands a little closer, kissing him.

Showering with Sinclair is an experience. She did this in Rio, though it's more overt now. Her hands stay on him. She washes him, with a sort of delighted eagerness to be allowed to do so. She grazes her fingertips over the cut above his eye, accidentally, and winces as though feeling the sting herself. There's a look in her eyes that is undeniably a wish to do something about it, but she doesn't. But she does: caress with him lathered hands, and cover his chest when they move closer together, and kiss him with a slow, aching tenderness

so much like the way she kissed him in the rain that one afternoon that the only difference he can sense, for a moment, is that the water hitting them now is hot instead of cold.

And then her hand is on his cock, which is getting hard against her thighs and then against her belly, and Sinclair is gasping into his mouth when he reaches down to touch her back.

Oh, she whispers in his ear, barely audible past the rush of the cranky old shower, leaning into his chest while they explore each other at first, absently and aimlessly stroking, pleasuring, eliciting little shudders and noises of reaction, oh, I fucking love it. Which may be why he turns her around and presses his cock against her ass while he plays with her clit. Which may have nothing to do with that, at all. She rubs back against him all the while, whimpering and flattening her palms on the tile and bucking her hips when she comes, when he makes her come on his hand.

And leans her head back on his shoulder, brow turned to his neck, whimpering and gasping and trembling, rolling her hips still, her ass brushing against him every time until she reaches down and

he gasps.

Alex learns this much about Sinclair: she's not new to the fine art of the handjob, at least. Out of practice, absolutely. Nervous because it's him, definitely. But she kisses him while she strokes him, rubs him against her belly for awhile at first, gasps softly when he starts to fuck her hand in response, moaning and kissing him -- hard -- when he comes, reaching up with her other hand to hold onto the back of his head and keep him there. She's aroused again, albeit dimly, because , as she says

Oh, my god. Oh my fucking god, Alex,

but that's before they're recovering. And washing her off again, and laughing about it, and -- for a little while -- just standing together under the water, Sinclair unselfconsciously and unapologetically laying her head on his shoulder, exhaling a soft sigh when he puts his arms around her.

Her eyes close. They're both very warm.

--

"It's okay," she insists, as she's lacing up her sneakers again and he's rifling through his closet to toss her a jacket. "I'll be fine, it's like two seconds to the car."

But she takes the jacket anyway when he throws it at her, rolling her eyes and catching it, laughing as she puts it on. It makes her look smaller, because it's big on her. It makes her look

well. Like his girlfriend.

She puts her hair in braids again, wriggling her hair tie off his wrist, smiling because it was there at all, amused and inexplicably endeared. He bellows at her to hurry up, he's hungry, and she informs him lightly that he can walk, then, and yet they're both hardly meaning a word of it, because Sinclair takes no time at all and because she wouldn't make him walk any more than she'd make him wait. She's grinning when she smooches him, quickly, before going out the door.

They don't race down the stairs. They do hurry, though, filled with the abundant and self-renewing energy of the athletic, nevermind that she seems startled and pleased when he reaches for her hand. Not so surprising, how voracious she is in bed, how quickly she comes with him: all he has to do is touch her hand, and Sinclair seems to vibrate with small bursts of happiness. Melts when he puts his arms around her. Catches fire, if he kisses her.

--

Of course they're taking her car. Which means she's driving, keeping his jacket on though she's got a hoodie stashed somewhere. Which means they arrive at Islands and she's still looking like his girlfriend, and her face looks soft and serene when she's anything but because there's nothing on it: no eyeliner, no pale lipgloss, nothing to darken or harden her. And she's smiling, and she seems so ...almost childishly, animalistically happy, all but glowing from it. It makes the humans uneasy; she's not trying to pretend she's not as gleeful as she is. She's not pretending she's not focused pretty much entirely on Alex, standing next to her. She's not playing a game. Her affection is an open, blatant, immoderate thing, and

so is her rage. So is her nature, and they all know that even a friendly rottweiler puppy is still a fucking rottweiler, and just because she likes this dick with the tan doesn't mean she likes them, so:

Daw. So cute. And then they take them to their table and get the fuck away.

Sinclair sits beside him. Not across. Not a couple of feet away. She sits within a few inches, so close that their arms touch occasionally here and there, pursing her lips animatedly as she looks for what she wants to eat. What he says makes her raise an eyebrow, turning her head to look at him. "Okay," she says, amused, "but when you have a massive coronary, I don't want you to blame it on having sex with me. I," she goes on, announcing herself: "am getting a milkshake."

Her eyes go back to her menu. "This place makes me miss California," she says, somewhat idly. "I didn't know they even had Islands this far east. It's weird, being in here and it being like, fucking freezing and raining outside instead of a balmy sixty-seven degrees."

[Alex Vaughn] "I think they just opened or something," Alex replies. "Last time I went to Islands before this place right here was in Hawaii. That was years ago."

Then he drums his hands on the table. "Okay. I know what I'm getting." The menu flips shut. He pushes it over to the edge and then leans back, cocking his feet up on the opposite seat.

"When were you in Cali, anyway?"

[Sinclair] She's still looking over the menu when Alex decides what on the menu has three patties, bacon, and the ability to clog his arteries sufficiently. He leans back, props his feet up, takes up as much space as possible with a rather short frame. Sinclair flops her menu down and leans over it, elbows on the table, braids still wet, scanning her options.

"Moved there for school. Ended up staying after I dropped out, up til... sometime last June. But there were actually a few freaks who could stand being friends with me when I was still matriculating annnd we'd go hang out at Islands after movies and stuff."

[Alex Vaughn] While Sinclair's taking her pick, Alex is idling: drumming his hands on the table, then playing with the salt and pepper shakers, then reaching under the table to wrap his hand around her knee

and hook it over his thigh. It's a little awkward, and it'll probably make her sit back instead of leaning over the table, but Alex likes the closeness; it's comfortable for him. He resumes drumming, looking around to see where their waitress is.

"I almost went to USC just for the weather. But my dad convinced me the old Crimson was worth it. Same tuition, practically, anyway. Where was school for you?"

[Sinclair] His fidgeting doesn't make Sinclair glare at him, or tense up, or ask him to stop. His hand on her knee, however, makes her lift her head and turn to look at him, on the verge of unspoken question. That is, however, when he draws her leg over hers. It isn't so awkward, when she's -- blunt truth be told -- eminently flexible. It does necessitate leaning back a bit for comfort, letting her leg cross his knee, letting her calf hang down between his legs over the edge of the seat.

Sinclair puts her menu down after a moment, having decided while Alex was talking. "I would've picked L.A. over Boston," she says dryly, "and I hate L.A." She moves so that her shoulder touches his, the outside of their arms -- through several layers -- in contact now. "I went to UCSD. Only for a year and a half though."

[Alex Vaughn] "UCSD, huh? Is it true there's a nude beach across the street?"

Then their waitress is coming over, her bright grin becoming fixed as she comes closer to Sinclair's rage. Alex sits up a little to order. He wants a Hula with three patties. Yes, that's right, three. And bacon on top. Also: he wants a mango strawberry smoothie. Yep, that's all for him.

He hands the menu over, smiles, waits for Sinclair to order.

When the waitress departs, he resumes, "I'm actually not sorry I went to Boston. I liked it. Chicks knew how to dress there," because obviously his cheap jeans and rowdy t-shirts were the height of class and fashion. "Plus I liked that you could get anywhere in the city on subway and foot. Can't do that in so-cal."

[Sinclair] She snerks at the question. "Yeah," she confesses, though. "I met some very interesting folks out there." Their waitress wanders over, which precludes further discussion about the clothing-optional bits of Black's, and Sinclair does the woman a favor and doesn't look up to meet her eyes as she orders a Maui, no mayo, and a chocolate shake. Instead: she plays with Alex's right hand as she orders, splaying his fingers and resting her fingertips lightly between his knuckles, her pinky hooking softly between his thumb and forefinger.

"I liked California," she says, as though this is explanation. "I liked learning to surf. I liked it being warm. How's there's mountains and forests and vineyards and farms and ocean and deserts and ...I don't know. In Kansas you just stand on a rock and see forever." She shrugs, still fiddling with his hand, turning it over so she can see his palm, even though the waitress is gone now. "Never been to Boston. I think Lukas and Kate and Ed were there for a long time, but they've never talked about it."

A beat. "I almost went to MIT though."

[Alex Vaughn] At that, Alex laughs aloud. "You, MIT? No way. You're not geeky enough. You don't have glasses. Also, you don't hate me."

[Sinclair] Not geeky enough. Sinclair raises her eyebrows high, looking at him as though challenged. "I'll have you know, I once brought down power for twenty-four blocks of downtown Chicago and turned it back on again five minutes later without leaving the comfort of Starbucks. I am so geeky enough, buddy."

A beat. "But no. I don't hate you." She smiles. "What'd you study at Big H, anyway?"

[Alex Vaughn] Alex's eyes go wide. "Wait -- you did that? You fuck, I lost a deathmatch on Xbox live when the power went out!" She doesn't hate him: "No, I'm just an incidental casualty."

She smiles. He smirks. Then he leans into her and kisses her suddenly. Grins.

"Russian literature. And astrophysics. I think maybe I was rebelling against the Nation and trying to make myself as useless as possible."

[Sinclair] That shock in his eyes, that realization that that was her, makes Sinclair grin broadly, beamishly, utterly and openly pleased with herself. She was that night, too. Not only did she perform with absolutely gorgeous, orgasmic results, she utterly trounced the Walker who had challenged her... in that respect, at least. And that fucker's gone now. She's not elder of their tribe anymore, doesn't want to be, shouldn't be, but still: that was a proud moment. Even Regina would've been impressed.

You fuck he calls her, and she's leaning forward to kiss him, too, which makes them collide a bit in the scant space of air between them. A couple, definitely, think the people at nearby but not right-next-door tables, given the way she closes her hand with his when their mouths meet. Her palm is hot on the back of his hand, her fingers deceptively slender between his digits.

Pulling back, he tells her what he majored in, and she laughs. "Bitchy rebellion usually doesn't make a double major -- especially one like that -- at an Ivy League worth it." She leans in closer, her voice becoming breathy, weighted with feigned arousal. "Admit it. There's a shrine to Tolstoy and Aaronson in your closet."

Sinclair nips his lower lip, smiles, returns to her own space. "Theoretical or observational?"

[Alex Vaughn] "Nah," Alex's grin is lazy as she leans back out of his space, "I'm partial to Dostoyevsky."

Their drinks arrive. Alex, sitting on the inside, reaches past Sinclair to haul his smoothie over. "And," he says, plucking the paper sheath off his straw, "A little of both, really. This was undergrad astrophysics, so I was mostly learning what other people did. My senior 'dissertation' was essentially a rehash of previous pivotal work in the field.

"That said," he slurps, "I liked the theory better. I mean, hiking out at 2am to look at the sky was fun, but if I'd actually gone into astrophysics, I'd work the equations. That's where the knowledge frontier is really at. Observation just confirms theory, y'know? Plus, with observational astrophysics it's all luck. Most people spend their whole careers staring at x-ray images and never find anything interesting. Theory, if you put in the work and the brainpower, you'll get results. The dumber you are the worse the results are, but at least you have some control over it."

He slides his smoothie over, offering her a sip.

"So what the hell made you take down the powergrid, anyway? Whim?"

[Sinclair] He tells her which author he prefers, and really, if Tolstoy hadn't been the first to pop into her head, she would've guessed. He tells her which aspect of astrophysics held more appeal, and his smoothie and her shake arrive, and they start sucking down on the straws. Sinclair gets through more of hers, simply because she's not talking.

When he's done, she shakes her head at the offer of a sip: mango and strawberry on top of chocolate don't seem all that appealing. But she does say, offhand: "I like listening to you talk."

Which is what it is. She laughs quietly at his question. "No. Back when I was still elder, this guy challenged me. I beat him on that one. He beat me in the fight. Kept the position mostly because while the others of our tribe might follow me, they definitely wouldn't follow him." It wasn't a strong victory. She doesn't pretend it was. A few months ago, she would have. Built it up in her head so that she won by a landslide, that he just barely kicked her ass in combat.

She plays with her straw in the milkshake. "I stepped down after Arthur."

Which is her only concession to what still rides in her veins, begging to be said: nobody fucking beat me.

[Alex Vaughn] "What," Alexander laughs, "did he only take down twenty-three city blocks?"

Then what she's telling him sinks in, and Alex abruptly sits a little straighter. "Wait," he says, "if you're not Walker elder anymore, then who is?"

[Alex Vaughn] [heeehhh. ignore second bit of dialogue!]

[Sinclair] "No," she says wryly, "he like... climbed up some poles and snipped some wires or something, but part of the challenge was to bring the power back up, which... he didn't do." She smirks, and sips more of her milkshake. They're just waiting for their food now. And she's hungry, though her stomach isn't snarling as Alex's was earlier.

Sinclair, without preamble, leans against his side, all but putting his arm around her shoulders herself, looping both legs now over his thigh, sitting pretty much sideways in their booth's bench. "How come it's always weird with us til we fuck?"

[Alex Vaughn] That draws his attention, swinging his head around, his eyes meeting hers. A beat. Then, lightly, "I wouldn't call twice 'always', Sinclair. It wasn't weird the second time in Rio. It only got weird because ... well, because of how Rio ended."

This topic makes him a little uneasy; restless. It manifests physically in the way his arm is a little stiff around her, and in the way he twists his head on his neck as though to loosen some strain.

"Anyway," he finishes, "I don't think it'll be weird next time."

[Sinclair] [perception + 'empathy': i'm totally good at this, i swear]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Sinclair] Her brow furrows, eyebrows pulling together. Some of the warm relaxation goes out of the way they sit together, she all but in his lap and he holding his arm around her. They're close enough that when he swivels his head around their noses are mere inches apart. She looks a little taken aback, at first, then just shrugs, uncomfortable. "Okay," is all she says, and reaches for her milkshake, putting the straw between her lips and slurping down a few more mouthfuls.

[Alex Vaughn] Now she's quiet, and they're both kind of uncomfortable, and he's probably pull away from her if he didn't remember what she said about no one daring to touch her.

He doesn't look at her, though. His eyes are downcast, frowning at his smoothie. He fiddles with his straw for a while, then abruptly speaks again.

"Listen," he says, "let's just... let it be, all right? Us, I mean. Let's just see where it goes without talking about it all the time and ... dissecting everything, and stuff. Okay?"

[Sinclair] "I wasn't," she says, coming extremely close to bristling before she backs down a bit, lets her shoulders round again. He doesn't need to pull away; Sinclair is starting to, torso first, though her legs still tangle with his under the table.

Which, a moment later, gets plates set down on it.. Sinclair looks at the burgers and fries, at the quickly retreating waiter who barely rattles off an enjoyyourmeal before backpedaling the fuck out of there, then looks back at Alex. "I wasn't dissecting," she repeats, frowning, "and I don't talk about it 'all the time'.

"Jesus," she mutters quietly, sliding her legs away to sit facing the table again, now that their burgers are here.

[Alex Vaughn] Alexander's brow is furrowed now, his jawline tense as he picks up his burger. "I just don't want to constantly have to be assuring you that I still like you," he says, low, "or that things aren't weird between us, or whatever.

"I mean -- I like you, Sinclair. I just wanna be able to like you without getting questioned on it. Or having it taken out and discussed over and over. Okay? I know you don't mean it like this but it just -- " he winces, "it just makes me feel like you're getting clingy or needy or something."

[Sinclair] A couple of french fries in hand, the tips spread like a gang sign, Sinclair rolls her eyes and turns to look at him. "What about asking you why you think we're all awkward sounds like me asking you if you like me?"

The tension in the booth went from nil to high a moment ago, and tables a few spots away are trying not to look over at Sinclair, wondering if any second now she's going to break something. Slam her heavy glass milkshake mug down and then break it over Alex's head. Start screaming. She isn't. She isn't even close to breaking shit, or hurting him, or raising her voice. But she's tense, and they can all feel it. And he's closest to it.

And all of it is focused right where he is, too.

"Look, it feels weird with us a lot. And I know you like me. I wasn't asking in the car because I thought you didn't, and I didn't ask what I did just now because I need reassurance. I know... "

Sinclair stops there, pressing her lips together, looking down at her plate. She's still holding those two fries in hand, and not looking at him now. "I know," she says again, much quieter now, because it's hard to say this at all, much less in a normal tone of voice, "that it took me awhile at first to buy that you actually did want me. And I don't know, maybe after how Rio ended you think that I'm over here convinced you're just fucking with me or something and I'm just gonna get hurt again, but... I don't think that."

She looks at him then, as she says those last few words. There's a pause. "It pisses me off when I talk to you about what's on my mind -- which was, this time? Just that it's weird how much we pretty obviously like each other, and are all comfortable and happy, but that sometimes it still feels awkward and uneasy til we fuck, but if I bring it up, you take it off the table.

"So like, it's against the rules or something to talk to you about it, because," she lifts her hands, waves them slightly, affects a low, doofusy voice, "oh no, bitch be tryin' to define the relationship."

She stabs her fries into a dollop of ketchup, looking away again. "But no, no. Clearly I'm just glomming onto you and needing constant reassurance. Fuck you, Alex."

[Alex Vaughn] At her doofusy voice, Alex's eyes slice her way, unamused. And when she's finished, he puts his burger down, still chewing.

Wipes his hands. Then his mouth. Then swallows his food and says, "Sinclair, I don't know if you heard me when I told you in Rio, but it's not like I'm all that used to having a permanent relationship deal going. In fact you might say I've tried pretty damn hard to stay out of one, and especially one where the girl in question might literally up and take over my life.

"So I don't react well to any attempt to 'define the relationship'. In fact, I get kinda antsy at the idea that this is even a relationship right now. Which isn't to say I don't wanna be in a relationship with you or whatever the fuck. Just...

"Let's not talk about it, okay? I'm not asking you this because I think it's the right way to go about something. I'm asking you because that's how I need it to be right now if this is going to stand a chance of not being weird. For me."

[Sinclair] If she were human right now, the answer might be to spread her hands and just say Fine and get down to eating her burger, which has guacamole and swiss on it but not mayo. If she were human, a mortal girl trying to keep the figure she has, she wouldn't have gotten the Maui at all, wouldn't be chowing down on those fries like they're her enemies, wouldn't be sandwiching each bite between sips of a thick chocolate milkshake. If she were human, she might not argue at all. Or she might cry, get him to say

baby. baby, no, don't. i'm sorry. stop crying.

Or cry, just to see if he'd say anything at all.

Anything but human, though, is the female to his right. He's the buffer between her and the restaurant, it seems, and if they knew what he knew they'd realize he isn't much of one. Couldn't stop her, hold her back, unless he reached into Hindu mythology and hoped that, like Kali, she'd stop the slaughter if she felt his heart beating under her foot.

But it's not in his personality to submit like that, to lay himself out as buffer for humanity or as last clinging plea for her to just stop. If it is, Sinclair hasn't seen it. She's aware, perhaps more than he or anyone else thinks, of the fact that everyone in this establishment is scared of her, including the guy she came in with, who she couldn't stop touching, who she was so very clearly happy to be there with.

Now: she doesn't go on a slaughter. She doesn't lose her temper. She also doesn't break down in tears, or snap fine! and go silent, waiting for the oldest trick in the passive aggressive handbook to wear him down. Sinclair stares him, frowning. For quite some time, actually. Til she isn't, anymore, and is turning back to her dinner. It's a little while before she speaks again.

"The idea that I can't talk to you about it when I feel weird sticks in my craw," Sinclair says quietly. "And it pisses me off that even when I'm not feeling anything like that -- awkward, or needy, or uncertain -- and I just want to like, muse aloud with you, it's going to make you tense up and start talking about claiming and imprinting and taking over and clinging."

She stirs a bit of guac around on her plate with a fry. "I wouldn't try to talk to you about whatever pops into my head if I didn't feel... really comfortable just being with you. I'm not really like that with my pack or... anyone. But if it makes you feel weird, I'll try to hold off." She bites her fry, chews methodically, swallows. "If you just, y'know." Turns to look at him. "Not assume I'm talking about this stuff because I need to pick it apart or because I'm flailing internally or something."

[Alex Vaughn] When she frowns at him like that, he can't meet her eyes for long. Or: he can, but he doesn't want to. Doesn't want to risk it. Doesn't want to rile her. Doesn't. Want to.

So he doesn't look at her. He looks at his plate. Eats a few fries. Slurps his smoothie. Makes a pretty good show of not noticing her regard. And eventually, when she speaks, he stops. Listens with his face all taut from sheer nerves, sheer tension.

When she's finished, he speaks quietly.

"Not forever," he says. "But just not right now. Not when we've only been together three, four weeks. Not when we only really got together again tonight. Okay? Give me a little time, Sinclair."

[Sinclair] Even other Garou sometimes react to her like that. Don't meet her eyes. Pretend not to be intimidated by her. Except with him, it makes her chest hurt. But it doesn't make her stop watching him, because she has to watch him to think through what she's thinking through. Or something like that. Hard to imagine Alex as a meditative focus for anyone, much less a monster. He doesn't usually put her into a zenlike state.

She shakes her head a little, taking a deep breath and looking away again. "I said I'd back off with the talking," she murmurs, a trifle defensively. But then she sighs: "I'm just... not happy that of all the things I might have to hold back on with you, it's something like that."

[Alex Vaughn] "I know you said that," Alex replies. "But what I'm saying is: it's not going to be permanent. You won't have to hold back forever." A beat; then a weak joke: "Unless we break up or something."

It falls pretty flat.

[Sinclair] "Or I die," she says levelly, rounding out the flat jokes that aren't funny, as well as spelling out what or something might also mean. She pauses afterward though, her frown more of a faint inward grimace. "I'm sorry. That kinda came out more manipulative than I meant it. It's just the first thing that came to mind."

She picks up her burger. "In case it needs to be said, if you dump me I'm not going to kill you. Or like, challenge for you or something retarded like that. I just... want you to be happy." A wry twist to her lips, then. "Trite as that might sound."

[Alex Vaughn] That makes him look at her. That makes him reach out on impulsive to wrap his hand around the back of her head and bring her toward him. He doesn't kiss her. He just presses his brow to hers for a moment, eyes closed, skin warm. Then he nuzzles against her face and lets his hand drop.

"I am happy with you," he says. Then, embarrassed by what just came out of his mouth, Alex turns back to his food and stuffs his face.

[Sinclair] She exhales suddenly, when he does that. Like someone in pain, or shock, she lets an unvoiced rush of air ride over the roof of her mouth, lips parted. It's an intense reaction, but then: Sinclair's intense. And Alex was sudden, and a half-second later he and the warmth of his face and his hand are gone and she wants to break his wrists for being such a macho dipshit all the time.

Or: some of the time.

Sinclair takes a breath, and turns back to her dinner. Several bites in, when both of them are rather focused on eating, she wiggles her foot behind his, crossing their ankles under the table. It isn't often she does this, breaking distance that's between them after it's reasserted itself.

Three patties or not, he's out of food before she is. And Sinclair turns her plate a bit, moving it almost imperceptibly closer to his. She has fries left. "You can have some if you want," she says, in case it isn't obvious.

They eat, and it doesn't take long to finish, because they were already halfway there. They pay for themselves, if only because they both can. Sinclair actually has income, a checking account, a debit card. Who knew? Her signature is like a normal person's: a first name, an initial, a last name. The last name starts with an S. The first name doesn't. That's only if he sees it when the two checks hang out at the edge of the table together, though. If he looks.

It's stopped raining finally when they go outside, but the air is frigid. Sinclair folds her arms around herself, closing the sides of his jacket over her chest, swearing about the cold as they head back towards her car, which at least has a good heater and a small interior that warms up quickly, even though the drive back towards his place is only five minutes or so.

When they get there, and she parks, she remembers she left things here last time, including the clothes that were in her knapsack from Rio. She asks if he washed them, and he did, and... it's quiet for a moment after that, because she has a couple of changes of clothes at his place, and her toothbrush with the ladybugs and leaves on the handle. Sinclair licks her lips before they get out of the El Camino, blasted by the cold.

They don't race this time. Sinclair just walks with him across the lot, through the front door, up four flights of stairs to his apartment. She doesn't all but maul him in front of his door this time. She waits until they're inside, and the door is closed and locked and deadbolted, waits until he's shed his winter coat, and then she steps behind him and wraps her arms around his waist and presses her face against his back, breathing him in through all his layers.

[Alex Vaughn] When Sinclair nudges the plate his way, Alex doesn't hesitate to steal a few of her fries. Not a lot. He's pretty stuffed. But a few: because she offered. Because he intuits that that offering means something; is something.

Later, he does glance at her signature. He doesn't say anything about it then, but he does later in the car --

and on the way there, as she swears about the cold, he throws a strong arm around her and grips her fiercely to his side, as though his own southern blood weren't just as offended and devastated by the chill.

-- while she's driving five minutes back to his place and he's fiddling with the heater. "I didn't know your last name was Sinclair," he remarks. "I always figured your parents were doing that WASP thing where kids get named after ancestral surnames. Y'know, Peyton, Ashleigh. Vaughn."

And later still, they park; she asks about her things. He washed her clothes and put them in his closet. He stashed her toiletries in his medicine cabinet. He expected her to come back.

"You should just leave your stuff here," he says as they're heading up the stairs. "Save yourself the trouble of bringing an overnight bag every time you come."

And as they're rounding the last landing up to the fourth floor, "Plus I kinda like having your stuff at my place."

He doesn't explain that comment. He unlocks his door instead when he gets there, and then they're back inside his apartment and he's reaching out to flick the light on when she comes up behind him, wraps her arms around him, leans into his back. They're not that far apart in height. Her forehead rests against the back of his head, against his short hair. Her embrace is unexpected, and he starts just a little bit... but then he relaxes. A moment after, Alex covers Sinclair's hands with his own; reaches back with his free hand to pull her against him, closer.

[Sinclair] Children and animals don't share their food. They show it off, fight over it, snap mine! mine! no! mine! at the mere intimation of interest from another. Amongst packmates, sometimes, food is spread around after the hunting alpha has their fill. Here, they say, have what I don't want. I'm done. The offering of food before you yourself have eaten, the offering of food you would like to have, the offering of food that is enjoyed or special or something you need: that is such a rare and precious act among wild things (animals, children) that human begins elevated it to one of the highest notions of hospitality:

Here. Take what is mine. Take what I want for myself. Take it not because it is smaller, lower quality, or going bad: take it because it is good. Take it because I like you.

From something like Sinclair, nudging her french fries and murmuring that he can have some is saying a lot more than what she said earlier about wanting him to be happy. She doesn't think of it as trite or awkward or maybe just A Bit Too Much. And when you get right down to it, she really just wants to feed him, even if all her humanness stops her from hunting him something alive and bringing it back bloody. Or even picking up the whole check.

--

It makes her laugh when he pulls her close outside. Tips her head back and laughs, white teeth flashing, though she leans into his side and into his arm and utterly engulfs herself in his scent, from his hair and his neck and his body and the jacket she's wrapped up in. She smiles secretly when she turns her head towards him and closes her eyes for a step or two, thinks:

I'm happy with you, too.

--

"Nah," she says, at a red light. "My mom liked the name Heather since she was playing with baby dolls as a kid. I don't think they even considered other names." She presses her foot down smoothly on the gas, pulls forward as the light on her face turns pale green. "Would've been a Justin if I were a boy, though," she adds conversationally, thoughtfully. And also: "People started calling me by my last name in high school, for sports and stuff. But I guess Heather just doesn't fit me anymore."

If he asks, she even tells him what the J in the middle of her signature stands for. No. Not Justina.

She asks what his middle name is. And if he tells her, a smile: "That means 'lucky'." As though this pleases her.

--

A strange light in her eyes, when he tells her that her things are in his closet, that her toothbrush and that little, green, zippered bag with her toiletries in it are all in his bathroom. And a slight deepening to her breathing, when he tells her to just leave the stuff there. Sinclair doesn't tell him that even with as much time as she spends at the Loft, she doesn't even leave a toothbrush there. Doesn't feel right or something, though somehow it feels perfectly natural to have left her stuff at Alex's place. To leave it there for next time.

Her hand's linked with his. She took it somewhere on their way up the stairs, and it flexes between his fingers when he says he likes having her stuff there. "I thought it weirded you out, when you found out the bag and stuff were dedicated." Not really a question. Not really even a conversation starter. Almost an: oh. I guess I was wrong.

Her teeth play with her lower lip a bit while he's unlocking the door, and yet she doesn't play with his shirt or his belly or the fastenings of his belt and pants when she wraps her arms around him inside. Her head is bowed as though in prayer, forehead to his cervical spine, breathing, his warmth against the tip of her nose. At the touch on her hands, she steps closer of her own volition, as though welcomed even before he pulls her nearer.

"I know it's early," she murmurs, "but if you want to just go back to bed now I would so be into that."

[Alex Vaughn] Heather Jane Sinclair.

Now I believe you're from Kansas, he says, laughing.

--

And later, when she says she thought it weirded him out: "Huh? When did I -- why would you think that?"

If she tells him, he laughs it off; says nothing more on it.

--

And later still:

Them in his cramped living room with its ugly carpet and its rumpled couch and its cheapish flat-screen TV with his Xbox sitting in front of it. Her telling him she wanted to go to bed now, even though it was still early. He glances at his clock, laughs wryly.

"Nine p.m. isn't all that early for me, baby." His hand squeezes hers once, then unwraps her arm from around him, slipping his fingers through hers. "Come on, I'll show you where your toothbrush is. Washcloths and towels in here, by the way," he adds, thumping a shallow built-in closet in the walkway as they pass.

And while they're brushing their teeth:

"If you don't wanna leave your dedicated stuff here, you could just wear that out tomorrow and leave whatcha wore today here. I'll toss that in the laundry for you, too."

[Sinclair] That gets him Sinclair talking in her native accent for a good three minutes. There's a twang that's usually buried beneath the clip and cruise of what she picked up in California. There's an occasional drawl that ties her homeland to the south, though it's far from Dixie. That's when he finds out she calls -- or called -- her parents 'mama' and 'daddy'. No matter. Whitebread girl next door. All American. Cheerleader, athlete, Most Likely To... who was yet one of the most unpopular, avoided people at school by the time she graduated.

And later: she looks at him, explains that he got this weird look on his face when she told him why she didn't just write off the knapsack of clothes when he told her he still had her stuff, why she bothered to come pick them up, which led to the shouting match which led to them hammering out yes, okay, let's try this which led to them lying in bed together the way they keep seeming to fall asleep when they're in bed together: entwined, facing one another. Close.

But he laughs it off, and she flicks an eyebrow upward but, then: they say nothing more on it. She's not an idiot. He likes her. And he likes having her stuff at his place. And some of that stuff is literally bound to her very soul, which is a far sight more potent than a t-shirt she left behind in his bed that smells of her body.

Then, she breathes in and out deeply as she holds him, smiles when he tells her that nine isn't that early for him, and grins lopsidedly yet invisibly against his neck when he calls her baby like that, offhand. She sheds his jacket at the couch, lays it over the back, wiggling out of her sneakers and setting them along the baseboard of the hallway. Her mouth is full of toothpaste foam and toothbrush head the next time he speaks, which precludes her from answering until she leans over and spits -- rather delicately, all told -- into the sink.

"A lot of my stuff is dedicated," she mentions. "And... heh." A slight laugh, cupping water into her palm, "Probably safer here than on me."

She rinses her mouth out, finding a towel to pat her lips dry, rolls her head on her neck and begins undoing the braids she put her hair into after their shower, which were tight and wet and have now dried, leaving her hair in kinky little waves just like when he ran his fingers through it before, lazing on the bedspread with her.

A couple of little hairbands by his sink, toothbrush in the holder or cup or medicine cabinet, wherever he happens to keep his own. Like that's just where they belong. And a scoot, I have to pee to shoo him out of the bathroom. And later, however much later, she stands in his bedroom and undoes her jeans, pushing them to the floor and lifting one leg after the other to peel off her socks, crumpling them up on top of the jeans. Sits down on the edge of his bed to pull her t-shirt up over her head, back stretching out as she lifts her arms, relaxing as she drops the shirt to the pile of the rest of her clothes.

An afterthought, lounging around in new bra and familiar panties: Sinclair looks for his hamper, or laundry basket -- or pile. And scoops up her clothes. And tosses them in. Smiles a bemused little smile, looks over her shoulder to find him.

Still smiling.

[Alex Vaughn] They share the bathroom like they're accustomed to such a thing when neither of them are. They lean over the sink to spit by turns. Alex turns out to be one of those impatient toothbrushers: furious scrubbing, loud spitting, rinsing and gargling, more furious scrubbing. He uses mouthwash, too. Listerine. He makes the most warped faces imaginable as he rinses with it, and his face is bright red by the time he spits it out.

"Holy motherfucking jesus," he wheezes after. "God, I hate that shit."

It gives him great dental hygiene, though. His teeth are all sparkly-white, vivid against his tan when he smiles.

He waits outside while she does her business, then goes back in to wash his face and shave before bed. When he comes into the bedroom after her, he's clean and smells faintly of facial soap, shaving cream, and toothpaste.

He smiles back at her wordlessly, then undresses by his laundry basket, tossing shirt and jeans and socks and boxers in one by one as he removes them. "Here," he says, holding his hands out for her bra and panties. When she tosses them over, they go in the basket too. She'll have to remind him to wash the bra separately, or else it'll end up tangled and mangled.

Before he comes to the bed, he flips the ceiling light off and shuts the door. There's darkness for a while, which he navigates easily enough because this is his home, his den, his, and then the bedside lamp clicks on. It's obvious he lives alone. He only has one nightstand, and everything on it is his. There's a clock radio there; a watch, a lamp, his cell phone. "Scoot," he says back to her, smiling, and when she does, he climbs into bed.

Deep, contented breath. Out again. Then he turns to face her.

"This is kinda nice," he says.

[Sinclair] She won't have to remind him. Sinclair wore out the pink bra til it all but fell apart. Now she has this one, and it's not her only one but it's the best one, and she's going to wear it until it falls the fuck apart, too. Which means: Alex won't be washing it. That item, she just leaves hanging on the doorknob, when she gets up to wiggle out of her panties and fling them into the basket.

Moving about the room when he's not trying to slam her onto the bed and fuck her senseless, it's a little more obvious that there's a new addition to her body, that cufflike tattoo wrapping around her left ankle. In the dark, though, it's little more than a blur of lines at the end of her leg as she's crawling into bed with him.

She finds her way by scent. His. Doesn't mention it, just... moves with grace in the unfamiliar darkness, searching out the warmth and noise of breathing that indicates to her where he is, the scent of sex and sweat that indicates where the bed is.

Scoot, he says, and she grins up at him in the dim, warm light cast by the lamp, refusing to budge for a second before rolling over, squirming to the side and turning again to face him.

"Yeah," she agrees, in a whisper because it's nighttime. Her hand moves under the covers. It comes to rest on his stomach, but only for a moment. And then it's moving, slowly, sliding past his abdomen to wrap around his side. She breathes in as she moves closer, laying her face against his chest, breathing in.

Sinclair nuzzles his left pectoral, a low mmm reverberating behind her lips as her eyes close. "I like coming here." Then a moment, filled with realization, because it isn't that, not really, it's:

"I like being with you, Alex. I always... really have."

[Alex Vaughn] They fold each other close. There's an easy warmth in this. She nuzzles his chest and mmms, and he laughs quietly and mmms back at her before reaching back, twisting about to click the light off.

Then it really is dark in his bedroom, the only light coming dimly from the curtained windows. No rain tonight; no snow falling softly outside. Only a coming spring outside, and the sound of their breathing in here.

After a while he says, "Back when you came to get your stuff from my place. After Rio, I mean? I probably had a funny look on my face because I was kinda bummed that you'd just come to pick your stuff up. I was kinda hoping you'd come to see me."

His hand traces her back for a while. Then he clears his throat, awkward with the confession.

"What's your new tattoo?"

[Sinclair] And later, she said earlier, when he was sliding his body between her legs yet again and she was starting to pant for him again, when will you fuck me again? turned out to mean right now. Yet Sinclair isn't climbing on top of him right now, opening her legs and kissing his neck and urging him with brushes of flesh against flesh to just touch her. They're just... well, simply put, cuddling. And her arm is around him, and then her leg slides up over his legs, and she breathes with him. It gets warmer under the covers.

He speaks, while Sinclair traces her fingertips in loose patterns on his side, just short of ticklish. It's as though he can sense where her fingertips are going next. She murmurs:

"I kinda missed you. And I wanted to see you." Then: "But I also really didn't. I didn't know..." her hand flaps under the sheets, uncertain, then curls around his side again, "how I'd handle it."

Says that like: bear it.

She doesn't explain any more than that, and likely doesn't need to: she was hurt. And angry. And from the way she drops that topic, she doesn't like to think about it, doesn't want to talk about it.

"Turn the light back on," she says, when he asks about the new ink. When the lamp is on, Sinclair pulls away and rolls onto her side, propping herself up on one arm. Her leg lifts, displacing the covers, til she puts her foot lightly on his solar plexus so he can see it. The tattoo is intricate and expansive, perhaps three or four inches from top to bottom at its tallest point and folding around her leg. It's a circle done in dark blue ink, filled with stylized, overlapping palm leaves and littered here and there with stars and constellations -- crux, canis major, spica -- as though they're shining down through the leaves. Words wind through the design and wrap around her ankle, the line of text arching over stars:

as almas são incomunicáveis. deixa o teu corpo entender — se com outro corpo. porque os corpos se entendem, mas as almas não.

[Alex Vaughn] So he turns the light back on, squinting a little. She lifts her leg and he cradles her foot against his breastbone, gently, as he looks at her latest inkwork. Alex smiles a little, lopsidedly, as he sees the constellations.

"The southern cross," he says quietly, tracing the one constellation invisible to them, this far north. "Canis major. And Virgo."

His fingertips linger over the words, then. His portuguese is abysmal, and he doesn't try to read it aloud or guess at the meaning. He just touches the script as though he might divine their worth, and then he lowers her leg over his side.

"What's it mean?"

He doesn't just mean the words. He means all of it.

[Sinclair] Of course he asks. She knew he would, because he's asked about almost everything else on her body, though that's something he only began when they were sitting together on a lounge chair in Rio and she was telling him -- though in more words -- I want you. So badly. -- and he was considering whether or not to take her up to his room to take her virginity.

It makes the corners of her lips flirt upward that he recognizes the stars. The meaning, though:

"You know how the flag of Brazil has the blue circle on it?" she asks, tracing the circle of the tattoo itself. She doesn't need an answer; that is the explanation. For that part. Her fingernail moves to the palms. "All of the palm trees at the entrance to the botanical gardens descend from the same mother tree. And while I was waiting for you I looked up through them."

Now to the southern cross. "On their flag, all of the stars represent certain cities. This is Rio," she says, pointing to one arm of the cross, "Beta Crucis." And canis major. "And one of the dogs that follows the hunter," and two particular stars in the constellation, "but these are called 'the virgins' and 'virgin', too."

No blush, at that. Or here: "And of course virgo." A wry smirk, though. "I mean... those represent cities in Brazil, too, but that's not why they're on my leg." She laughs quietly at that, and seems like she would lean over and kiss him, but her leg is at an odd angle and so

Sinclair slides it back down under the covers, crossed over his body, and is now laying half on top of him, leaning over to kiss the corner of his mouth, his jawline. "The words are from a poem by Manuel Bandeira. It means 'souls cannot communicate. Let your body talk to another body. Because bodies understand each other, but souls don't'."

She kisses his earlobe, and pulls back a bit so she can see his face. Her eyes are concerned. A little. Or nervous. "Don't feel weird, okay? I didn't get it, like... because of how I feel about you, I got it because... it was important to me. No matter how things had gone with us when we got back here, I mean."

[Alex Vaughn] "I don't feel weird." He's smiling when she pulls back. "I like it. And I think I understand. It's not ... in commemoration of me or us or something. It's a milestone in your life. Just like all the others."

The light turns out again. They're warm under his covers by now, warm and close, and the room is dark and small, a den. He doesn't turn on his side again after switching the nightstand lamp out. Alex lies on his back, Sinclair half atop him, and his hand strokes her back gently under the covers, the fine lines and intricate designs of her ritual scar passing under his fingertips.

"I'm glad you got it. It fits."

[Sinclair] So she nuzzles him, his cheek and his face and her hair falling across it, still smelling like his shampoo. There's no need for her to say anything, and no desire to at this point. Her lips do brush his, and touch his face, but she settles after a bit, into his arms, against his chest. She exhales a deep breath, and gives a shiver that has nothing to do with the temperature in the room.

[Alex Vaughn] The shiver makes him hold her closer anyway, though. He turns to kiss her temple, and then Alex closes his eyes.

"Goodnight, Sinclair," he whispers.

[Sinclair] A noise, then, when he says goodnight and closes his eyes. It's an almost animal sound, simultaneously surprised, questioning, disappointed.

[Alex Vaughn] ...which makes Alex laugh suddenly, a palpable reaction in his chest. "Baby," he says, "you fucked my brains out four times in a row. Give me a breather."

There are still condom packets strewn on the covers somewhere. Or maybe they've fallen to the floor by now.

"But if you wanna," he says, quieter, "you should stick around tomorrow morning. I'll be back from the gym by 10am or so." He pauses. "We can have lunch after, before you head back to your pack."

[Sinclair] "Islands was a breather," she counters, and somehow the mention of my brains out

and four times in a row and

Baby

only seems to make her feel more intense. Make his body beneath hers more real. Hotter. She exhales, vaguely remembering him saying something the first time she visited him in Rio about pushing. About how he knows she wouldn't. She breathes in and out again, deeply, putting her forehead on his chest, taking a moment to get a hold of herself.

"Nnngh," she groans, more in effort than complaint. Another deep breath. He can feel her where he holds her, tense with restraint, trying to work herself back down.

[Alex Vaughn] "Shh," he murmurs. Alexander's like a fucking bird: lights go out and he gets sleepy. He nuzzles her again, loosely, stretches his jaws in a wide yawn. "Tomorrow, baby. 'Kay?"

[Sinclair] She nods against his chest, her breathing still an effort. She makes no bones about her arousal, about her sheer and rather intense want. He's sleepy with the lights off; she's surrounded by his scent, and the scent of their fucking earlier, and her tension is made that much more jagged by suddenly frustrated expectations. And by his body, warm and languid against hers, inviting as it is. Firm. Smooth.

The urge to bite him hits her, to set her teeth in his flesh and dig in, as though this will relieve her somehow. Her energy seems limitless until she falls asleep, he knows that much. Sinclair closes her eyes more tightly, putting her lips together so she doesn't startle him with a jawlock to his shoulder. She fights that urge. And she fights the urge to try and arouse him, to move herself against his body out of blatant and sharply spiking desire. And she fights the urge to, worse, say please.

It takes time for Sinclair to calm down. Sleepy as he is, Alex likely can't help but be aware that there's a wild, agitated thing in his bed with him, wrapped around his body and yet taut from control. She can't nuzzle him back

because she wants to kiss him. And she can't snuggle closer to him

because she'll rub against his leg like an animal. And she can't pull away

because that would seem so petulant, so selfish, so cold, even if it would make it easier for her to relax.

Sinclair eventually slides a bit to one side of Alex's body, drawing her leg back against its partner. Her feet nestle alongside his left one, and her arm stays around him, and she closes her eyes as she lays her head on his chest and arm in hopes that doing so might start the process of actual relaxation. It shouldn't be this hard. A lot of things would be easier, if she weren't...

well. What she is. Who she is.

And if she didn't want him so badly, and if her sex drive weren't stratospheric. And if it hadn't been three weeks. And if she didn't, quite simply, love fucking him like she does.

Alex falls asleep well before Sinclair, and it -- somehow -- soothes her. Flips some switch in her, darkness-adjusted eyes watching him slip from consciousness to the steady, still depths of sleep. She watches him, allowing an ache she's dispersed or repressed over and over since last summer blossom fully in her chest. For once, it takes her a long time to go to sleep. She stays where she is, on guard for the sake of what instinct tells her is vulnerability.

She includes herself in things to be wary of, to watch for, to stand in front of so they don't get at him. Because whether she would or not, they both know the truth: she could take over his life. She could do anything she wanted to him. She could have persuaded him in multiple ways to give her what she wants. She's stronger. Faster. She's not the Elder of the Glass Walkers anymore

but he's her kin.

And he's Alex.

When he wakes up, early as usual, Sinclair is snoozing beside him, one arm limp but protective over his chest, her knee just barely trespassing across his own. She's so deeply asleep that she barely does more than mutter a short mm when he gets up, and doesn't open her eyes.

Around ten, when he gets back, the door to his bedroom opening again is what finally wakes her. Her eyes open drowsily to look at him, incoherent and not seeming to quite recognize him beyond the sense that he is known, the feeling of affection.

"Alex," she whispers, reflecting that rush of familiarity, when he sits down on the bed near her. She sounds happy.

[Alex Vaughn] Alexander likes to think of himself as strong. A cut above the rest.

He can run a four and a half minute mile. He benches two fifty easily, and he only weighs one sixty. He's had years and years of advanced martial arts training in a multitude of disciplines. He's never told her much about that -- how he got into martial arts, and how he got into MMA -- but his sort of skill, which is not the raw primal viciousness of a garou but something much more disciplined and deliberate, is not something one develops in a year or two.

The truth is, Alexander might be one of the best human fighters in the city. Or the state. He could be one of the best in the world. He could be world famous if he had a better coach, a better manager, better fights with more money attached.

And the truth is: you could pit Alexander against the least of the Dancers that she fights -- the weakest, most pathetic cub -- and he'd lose. He'd die. There's no question about it.

So: she thinks he's vulnerable. And she's right. All that hard muscle, all those hard bones toughened by years of training, and he's utterly vulnerable compared to her. In this relationship, despite what society and gender roles might say, there's no question where who is the protector, and who the protected. There's no question where the power axis lies.

He's her kin.

And he's Alex.

And in the morning he's up early. Last time, he was very quiet. He tried not to wake her. This time, he knows better. He goes about his morning -- he doesn't bang around as much as usual, but he doesn't take any particular care to creep about. He brushes his teeth and makes his protein shake and dresses; he jogs to his gym and works out for hours and hours and jogs back.

He showers. He opens his bedroom door again, and she's finally waking up to look at him as he's sitting on the edge of the bed, and he's undoing his towel and tossing it on the floor as he slips in beside her, grinning at her as he reaches to draw her closer.

"Sinclair," he replies. Softly. He smells clean and fresh; like the new day outside.

He sounds happy.

[Sinclair] Without her Wolf, Sinclair and Alex are so evenly matched it's startling to find something so close in members of the opposite sex. He's a mere three inches taller than she is. If he ran, she would keep pace. She could spot him on any weight he can lift. Her means of fighting is... ruthless. It's about destroying, hurting the other person at any cost because maybe if you fuck them up enough with the first blow, if you do something so against the rules every fighter knows without learning, they'll realize they need to stay the fuck down.

And she would still protect him. Without Perun. Without the Wolf. Without gifts, without any such division between kin and kind. Sinclair would, and not because of his vulnerability to Dancers, fomori, monsters or mankind. But because: on some level she gets, intuitively, why he is the way he is. Why he's a jackass. How much of it is bluster, and where it comes from. It isn't that she hides her own insecurity better -- not at all. It's that in her world, there is no room for it. No allowance. No quarter. There's strong

and there's weak

and there's not a whole hell of a lot in between.

Maybe that's why she reveals so much of those insecurities when she's around him. Those discrepancies between how the Nation sees her -- how he saw her -- and who she really is, and who she used to be, and how she really feels about things. It isn't that Sinclair's a dishonest person, far from it, but she is viciously self-protective. She's made too many mistakes to believe herself perfect anymore. And maybe that's part of it, too: every time she sees Arthur's name on her arm, every time she sees Kenneth's, she reminds herself of her own limitless fallibilities.

So: she has some sympathy for Alex's. And does not expect him to be perfect, either.

There's vulnerability to her that she doesn't show even with her packmates. There's a relaxation of her defenses around him, especially now, that shows itself in how easily and quickly she usually falls asleep with him, how hungrily she eats, how much she tells him. How much she asks to know, even. How she sleeps comfortably in his bed while he's not there, comforted and kept low in rest by lingering warmth, lingering smells, lingering memory.

Which greet her when she wakes, along with light creeping in the edges of the curtain, and Alex back again as though he'd never left, though he smells differently. She inhales deeply as he pulls back the covers and gets in beside her, his hand on her lower back, his thumb and forefinger barely touching the bottommost edges of her scarring. Even as he's settling himself into bed with her, she reaches up and her hand becomes soft on his cheek, her head lifting from the pillow as she encourages him to come down, to kiss her again, because

it's been a long time since she last kissed him.

For awhile it seems like she might just drowse to sleep again, now that he's back in her arms and she's warm and relaxed and at ease. She urges him with her hands to lie down, to face her, and wraps herself around his body. Her leg hooks over his waist. Her face buries against his chest. But her legs are open, and she's soft and mellow and when his fingertips travel down the curve of her ass, when his head ducks and he brushes his lips over her breast, Sinclair just... shudders.

It's slow this time. Aching. Firm, not fast. She licks her lips and whispers for him to

put it inside me. alex, please. oh, fuck.

This is the girl he's exclusively dating. Or occasionally fucking, whatever. Whimpering in his bed, the sunlight through the curtains glinting off her nipple ring, off her earrings, off the bar in her arm, of the gold of the tan still clinging to her skin. She bites her lower lip when she comes, her brow tight and wrinkled with pleasure, her head turned to the side on his pillows as she

clenches down on his cock,

holds on to his back,

moans with something that sounds like relief, as though some fierce pain is being alleviated.

Her body rolls sinuously against his over and over again until her orgasm lets her go. Her hands stroke down his body to hold his flank, to urge him to fuck her more, to go at her faster, to

come in me. oh, alex, fucking come in me.

Afterwards, she doesn't fall asleep. She lazes for awhile longer, satisfied at last, kissing him for awhile

until his stomach growls.

This time it makes her laugh even louder than she did the first time. Makes her kiss him, grinning. Makes it take her a long, long time to leave him after they get dressed and she showers and they grab a bite to eat and she's wearing a hoodie over the same thing she wore in Rio and holding her hands on his face in the car and just... kissing, for awhile, til they pull themselves apart and she nuzzles him goodbye and waits for him to get to the door of his building before she pulls out and heads back towards the Brotherhood, or the Loft, or the Caern.

When he goes inside, her hairbands are still by the bathroom sink, laying one over the other like interlocking rings, their bright colors humbly and happily saying:

Hello! I'm here, now.