Sunday Morning Coming Down

[Boy]

Morning has set in. The night has fled and taken with it the sounds of rampant destruction and Rage that filled the house the night before. The evidence has stayed, however. The living room is trashed. The entryway just beyond the door is pretty much the same, only its smeared and spattered with blood. And there are no morning sounds. No Rhythms being made. No cutting, sawing, hammering, or even the huffs of exertion from the corner of the Basement in which Boy spends most of his time. There's no sign of him anywhere in the house. Except when the tumblers in the front door lock click and the knob turns. Then he's standing there, still ripped open and bleeding even though he's used his own shirt as a quick bandage. The rest of him is smeared in dried on blood. Boy looks like he's been through hell, and his body hangs with the fatigue that ought to come with that. But his eyes are still brilliant and searing, even though he doesn't look to anything other than the floor.

[Wendy Berber]

*She'd returned home from work excited. The Pack was getting their totem back. She surely would have missed out on the original revelry, but if nothing else she'd hoped to bask in the afterglow. She'd bought Chinese food as a treat for the household and everything, only to walk in and find their living room in shambles, blood along the door frame, and a defeated Marrick explaining Boy would be back later. Wendy hadn't asked questions. She'd just tucked the food in the fridge and spent the night waiting for her mate to return. Finally the skinny workaholic had succumbed to sleep upstairs. It was the front door opening that wakes her. She appears at the top of the stairs, holding nervously onto the banister, thin featured face pinched with concern. She can't see his eyes, but his posture hits a chord, and socked feat pound quickly down the stairs.* B-boy?

[Boy]

He winced at the sound of footsteps rushing down the stairs. He'd preferred not to have any of the house regulars see him like this. The fact that its Wendy's voice calling out his name doesn't make it any better it seems. An oppressively fierce look shoots to her immediately. There was still plenty of fight, and perhaps even more danger in the wounded wolf. Boy didn't need to speak. That one look communicated everything. Not another step closer it said.

[Wendy Berber]

*One glance is all it takes. Boy's mate coming up so short so abruptly she nearly trips, hand splaying then slowing withdrawing, curling protectively to her chest as she straightens at the bottom of the stairs. Wendy freezes but for a shudder, wide eyes blinking behind thick glasses. She opens her mouth to speak and thinks better of it. She'd seen that look before, enraged and pointed. The reedy glasswalker kin swallows audibly, stock still in her too big clothes, eyes averted.*

[Boy]

For a few horribly uncomfortable seconds, seconds which take an eternity to pass, his gaze sits there on her. And then he's moving, evident only by the shuffling of his feet and the gradual displacement of heat and Rage from the vicinity of the front door to the Kitchen. Boy doesn't speak. He doesn't explain why the living room is trashed and the front door is caked with blood. He doesn't explain why HE was caked in blood. He goes to the refrigerator, opening it with a clang and a rattle. He doesn't ask who the boxes of chinese food were for. He doesn't ask what was in them. He takes one out, fumbling to open the top with the same hand that he was holding it with. The other hand held the makeshift bandage at his neck in place as Boy tipped his head back, raised the carton of Chinese to his mouth, and ate noisily from it.

[Wendy Berber]

*Boy moves. Wendy's eyes trail along the floor in the direction he moves, fingers curling tight in the t-shirt she's wearing. Wendy Berber, for all her cleverness, is at a loss. Instinct tells the toothpick kin to go back upstairs. To leave the unhinged garou alone. Emotion seeing only her mate, only Boy battered and bloody, urging her to go to him regardless. Perhaps thats the reason she stands frozen at the stairs, turned to haunt the door of the kitchen like just one more specter in the house. She brings a sharp knuckle to her mouth and nibbles at it silently as Boy upturns noodles.*

[Boy]

He was hungry, apparently. Nearly half the box of food gets shuffled and poured down Boy's throat before he relents, placing it firmly back on the shelf of the still open refrigerator. He begins searching through it again, this time coming up with a carton of orange juice, thankfully already opened. Boy gives the top of the carton a squeeze and when it pops open he raises it to his head, but this time only gets a disappointing trickle of the remaining juice inside. The carton is dropped, the fridge door is left open, and Boy moves on to rooting around the kitchen. Looking for something.

[Wendy Berber]

*Wendy Berber is confused and frightened, watching Boy as he moves around the kitchen with uncharacteristic disrespect for the house he'd worked so many painstaking hours on making a home. Her gaze wanders to the blood smeared entryway, to the living room that once had a fine mural and a small but treasured library, no little more than scattered pages and broken furniture. Boy's looking for something when Wendy drags moist eyes back to the kitchen. He didn't want her company. but maybe.. he'd take her help.* Wh-what are you looking for? *Just above a whisper, voice croaky as she clings to the banister.*

[Boy]

His attention swings to her, eyes wide again, almost as if startled. Boy's whole body seemed tense, but gradually, except for the hand holding the bandage on his throat in place, that tension subsides. Still, for nearly half a minute he just looks at her, occasionally licking a bit of sloppily eaten Chinese off his cheek. "I'm thirsty." He says eventually. Somehow his lack of movement was no more comforting than his rummaging through the kitchen.

[Wendy Berber]

Ap-p- Apple Juice? um.. in the p-p-pantry? I th-think? *Wendy does not relax. Everything in the whole world looks like it could go bad right now. Instead she looks away from him, geek shrinking into herself before his eyes. As though waiting for him to look away so she can blink out of existence.*

[Boy]

Look away he does, stalking over to the pantry and, thankfully, not over to her. He pulls the pantry door open and leaves it open. One hand still holds that bandage in place as the other fumbles with the bottle awkwardly. Eventually he thinks to hold it under his opposite arm while unscrewing the cap. It works, and the juice spills out onto the floor before he can correct it. Boy drops the cap to the ground, raises the bottle to his mouth and drinks until its empty. When he's finished he moves again, this time toward the stairs. Toward Wendy. He stops at the foot of the stairs, a few dangerously short feet away from her, and stars at her feet for a long uncomfortable moment. "I'm tired." He says eventually, and continues up the stairs.

[Wendy Berber]

*Wendy grows more anxious the closer her mate comes. This was the Boy she saw in glimpses when the moon was full or split. The wolf wagging its tail, waiting to bite. A twitchiness takes residence between her sharp bony shoulder blades. She dares him a glance while his eyes are down.* [per emp like your life depended on it! WP]

[Boy]

to Wendy Berber Tired. He looks tired. He looked dangerous and feral, sure. But he looked tired more than anything. Boy wasn't out for Wendy's blood. He looked like he might have been thinking about something to say. An apology, perhaps? An explanation? But then, all that fierceness is sapped right out of him. He says he's tired. He doesn't look like he might be thinking anything else.

[Wendy Berber]

*Wendy doesn't want an apology. Explanations, yes, but Boy hardly looked in the state to give them right now. So instead, as he comes up towards her, she backs up, opening the door to their shared room and asking quietly.* Um.. come sleep?

[Boy]

"Mmm" Is his only response. He moves as if on auto pilot. As if the only thing guiding him was his want of sleep. He hardly seemed to notice that Wendy had opened the door. He stepped right over the rug in their room. He didn't pull the sheets back before sitting gently on to it, one hand still holding the bandage at his throat, the other falls momentarily at his bare chest. "I feel..." He starts to say, but simply lays down instead, smearing dried blood on the pillowcase.

[Wendy Berber]

*The pillow cases would wash. Wendy's slight weight can be felt at the end of the bed, nerd wincing in silence at his wounds. He needed sleep. and Wendy wanted simultaneously to comfort and flee, swallowing audibly as she crawls a little further up the bed.* I'll b-b-be with you. *6 feet of nervousness and knowledge moves slowly toward him, spindly limbs carrying her to where she usually sleeps.* Wh-what do y-you feel?

[Boy]

His eyes, which weren't focussed on her, turn to consider his mate as she comes closer. No, as she speaks. She moves nearby, settling on the bed, shifting her weight and none of it makes a dent in his stupor. But she speaks and those hot eyes flash to her for a moment. And then they close. The only thing that really followed was the sound of Boy's breathing as he eased himself into sleep.

[Wendy Berber]

*A hard swallow as his eyes spit her, Wendy tensing and freezing. But as Boy drifts to sleep she finishes lying down beside him. His wary mate doesn't touch him, doesn't sleep immediately. But she'd be there when he woke up. And perhaps thats the best she can do.*