Decker Rohl

Decker Rohl

Wed 01:59AM EST
All the way back, Decker said nothing at all. The Modi slouched in the seat and stared out the window at the darkness, and at his reflection distorted in the curved glass staring back.

At the branch of the path, James and Terrapin head off toward Rune's apartment, which is still dark. Rune must be having trouble finding Livingston. The other two turn toward the right-hand path, heading up the stairs to Imogen's condo in their usual silence. At the door - fixed at last, at least - Decker leans one shoulder against the stucco, her guitar over the other shoulder, and waits for her to open the door.

Preoccupation: she could feel it on him. He had his mind on something else. He's had his mind on something else all night. It's a cold night and in his damp clothes he shivers faintly.

Imogen Slaughter

Wed 02:05AM EST
The porch light flicks on as they approach, the motion sensors kicking in. Her key slides home into the lock as she glances at him, the fine shiver that runs across his muscles. The door opens with a faint creak, the brand new hinges complaining softly, as she enters, holding the door open for him to come in as she kicks off her boots.

Decker Rohl

Wed 02:11AM EST
Still outside the door, he holds his guitar out to her. When she takes it he says, "Gonna go change." A brief quiet as his eyes flicker over the inside of her condo, exactly the way she'd left it over a week ago. "Be back soon."

Turning, the Modi climbs up on the balustrade and jumps across, letting himself into Rune's apartment. James and Terrapin are talking over a joint and the tunes are playing. The Bone Gnawer looked happy and relieved that his pack was back again. Decker looks at them as he passes, but doesn't say a word.

In the spare room where he kept his things, Nova's still absent. Still healing under the care of ThunderOak. He should visit her sometime: the thought flits through his mind as he bangs around in darkness until he finds the light switch and bathes the room in the glow of a 60W bulb.

He finds boxers, a shirt, pants, and changes quickly with the door half-open, standing out of the direct line of sight. Didn't expect anyone to come barging in, anyway. On his way back out, he leaves his clothes in the washer and pulls the sweatshirt back on, zipping it closed.

Then, hopping back over the railing between the same way, he knocks on Imogen's door.

Imogen Slaughter

Wed 02:19AM EST
The door swings open, as she lets him in, dark eyes on his face as she steps aside, one hand tucked into her back jean pocket.

There are no signs of brief case or guitar within the condo, all signs of such things, hidden away, where ever she keeps her work files, and in the bed room, where she keeps her music.

She shuts the door behind her, leaning against the doorjamb for a moment, eyeing him. His preoccupation lifts from him in waves. Like so many things she must have seen tonight, she'd be a fool not to notice it.

Decker Rohl

Wed 02:23AM EST
The door shuts behind him and he turns to look at her, one hand behind his neck, rubbing the base of his skull where the coarse hairs of his head softening into the fine hairs on the back of his neck. Their time together is measured by the gaps, the silences; another moment of stillness passes before he turns back to the couch he was headed toward, sits. Same place as always, not bothering to turn the light on.

"It still ain't safe, you know." He seems able to lift himself from his own thoughts enough to say this, but she already knew that. It's never safe.

Imogen Slaughter

Wed 02:30AM EST
Sometimes the silence says everything. More often than not, it is simply gaps, where neither of them have the energy to probe on what perhaps might/should be said.

She sits down in the easy chair, curling her slender frame into the cushions, "I know," she replies after a moment. "You didn't say anything about the kinfolk." The kinfolk had been the one who knew things. And obviously who had told things.

She pillows her chin with her hand, leaving the light off above her off for a moment. An inhalation of breath, perhaps the beginning of a question, before she exhales again, choosing to say instead, "What now?"

Decker Rohl

Wed 02:36AM EST
He's perceptive, occasionally astute: the inhale which seemed about to mould itself about a question causes his eyes to flicker up. With the lights off, the grey is dark, dark as the belly of a thunderhead. The only light in the room comes from the one ceiling lamp over the door, illuminating a scatter of shoes, a patch of tile, dimly glinting off the crests of his form. Knuckles, ridge of brow, upper lip.

She is cast in shadow. He didn't know much about her, and she didn't know much about him.

A shrug, at last. "Hunt her. Kill her. Hunt Asher's packmates," that they know of, "kill 'em. More'll come. Hunt 'em. Kill 'em." On and on and on. And every time, he loved it a little more.

"Ain't never gonna be safe for you," he adds - quieter, "long as yer with me."

With me. What did that mean, anyway?

Imogen Slaughter

Wed 02:45AM EST
In the shadow, it's nothing more than shapes and impressions, the faintest hints of life. The half curled shape of her body, the faint cut of her nose, straight and narrow. An impression of cheekbone. And sound. Breath; hesitation. And smell. Even her human dead senses can smell the faintest echo of blood on him, even after the washings. She's more familiar with it than most, and maybe it's her imagination. But it's there nonetheless.

Her free hand rests at her knee, and a shift of shadows as the long delicate fingers close into a fist, nails pressed lightly against flesh. "It wasn't safe for me before, either." The fist loosens in an eloquent bland gesture, meaningless in futility.

Decker Rohl

Wed 02:58AM EST
"I know. But..."
...safer.

In the darkness, when the color of her eyes aren't so arrestingly dark, so darkly indescribable, it is easier to speak. Easier to confess. All the same, the words come once every millennia, a trickle of water from a weeping-stone. "They're always gonna hit you. To get to me."

Measure the silence. Measure this silence: a heartbeat, ten. Conversation veers elsewhere; the connections, the web is visible only to him. For every sentence spoken, a hundred others loomed unseen. What he says is shaped by what he doesn't.

I'm sorry. Should he say it? ...no.
Silence.

Imogen Slaughter

Fri 11:52PM EST
In the short silence that follows, barely the space of a heartbeat, the automatic light outside of her door dies abruptly, washing them further into shadows, deepening it until there is little more than shapes and forms. Smells and sounds. the only light in the house now is the faint red glow of an answering maching off in a corner, declaring silently that she has a 150 messages waiting.

Her weight shifts, an abortive movement of her slender frame, inhaling audibly; start to say something. Stop. Start again. "And I'm always going to be a liability. Something you.. and your pack feels you need to protect." The way she speaks in turn speaks volumes. He does not need to protect her, but feels he must. And it is unlikely that even she is brazen enough to believe that she can survive the things his enemies through without help. "Always in the way."

Her voice suits the darkness, quiet tones, liquid sounds, lilting accent. It's a fraction of a second before she speaks again. "What would y'have me do?"

Decker Rohl

Sat 12:07AM EST
"I don't know."

Darkness falls, almost absolute. His shirt is a smudge of white in the darkness, the rest of him little more than a shadow whose eyes sometimes flashed. His mind takes a turn that his terse tongue cannot follow. There is a blankness, a no-sound, and then halting, stumbling words.

"When I was -- when Asher -- " no; pause; stop. Try again. "When I killed 'im he said things to me. 'Bout me." A weave, a bend, another strand of the net. There's a bitter sound that might've been a laugh, unvoiced and aspirated. "All I ever been good at, all I ever loved's killin'. He saw that, 'n he threw it in my teeth."

If I should fall.
Where will you run?

--no, he will not think it. Ever. Step back. He draws his hands up to his head and runs them slowly back over his scalp. He tilts his head back until the back of his skull rests against the soft back of the sofa and, laying his arms along the cool upholstery, stares at the ceiling to gather his thoughts, which drift like so many lost sheep.

"Lissen, if you--" he says as though he were beginning a new line of conversation, but there it stalls. He can't think of anything to say.

Imogen Slaughter

Sat 12:23AM EST
It occurs to her, mutely in the silence that follows she is not the one to whom to talk about this. She doesn't understand the wyrm. She has no great comprehension of the twists of Decker's soul, or the spirals that can easily entrap a mind.

It occurs to her as her weight shifts, discomforted, that she does not do her tribe justice in her silence. Hands rake through thick vibrant hair, red locks nearly blood black in the dark.

The silence aches and draws out, echoing through the condo, as heavy as a shroud. "You're in a war," she says finally, "killing isn't a choice. You would be dead if you weren't good at it."

Decker Rohl

Sat 12:29AM EST
In the darkness, with that sixth sense that even a kinfolk - especially a kinfolk - had, she can feel him move: alert-quick, a snap of his head up. Half a smile curves his mouth, and then he lets his head fall back.

"It don't matter." No; this isn't for her to hear. It wasn't for anyone to hear but himself. "It don't matter none."

He withdraws into his silence, and when he breaks it again the subject has returned to her. He gets up and goes to the window, where he becomes a shadow against the brighter shadows of the late night outside. He looks out, and then he turns around, light falling across his shoulders in dim streaks and pools. The couch and the window, the window and the couch: his time in her condominium seemed split between these two places.

Looking at her, his eyes are a palpable weight even unseen. "What do you wanna do?" he asks her, quietly.

Imogen Slaughter

Sat 12:43AM EST
She watches him move, following him with dark eyes unseen for the shadow. He moves to the window, and she remains where she is, a curled shape in the large easy chair. A faint flicker of the shadows by her thigh, as her hand moves, fingers striking out to beat a soft sound against her jeaned leg. She half begins to reply to the words he speaks to himself, before abandoning it because it would be useful, and she might be wrong.

He turns and looks at her and asks her a question, and even through the darkness, he can sense her eyes staring back, looking to where his eyes must be. Or perhaps he simply knows she wouldn't have done it any other way. "I..." she begins, aborting the sentence, abandoning the half started thought with a sharp clawed hand through her hair and a muffled curse expelled past her lips, the shadow of her head moving violently as she shakes her head.

"I don't rightfully no. But it doesn't involve runnin'," she says finally, hand dropping back to rest curled on her thigh.

Decker Rohl

Sat 12:52AM EST
Back to the cool windowpane, he crosses his arms. Standing thus, there's something almost sleek, or at least wolf-lean to him: hair shorn to a bare fuzz, arms across his chest, muscled shoulders tapering down the a canvas belt cinched low across his hips. He scratches his chin, and then he unfolds his arms and digs the supplies out of the pockets, rolls himself a joint - then realizes she didn't smoke her in condo.

"Yeah, I know." The joint stays where it is, unlit; he turns to look over his shoulder at the parking lot glimpsed through the manicured trees. His profile is a strong black silhouette; the homerolled joint sways up, sways down. Light catches at the bridge of his nose, pools in an eye, slips away as he turns back to her. He doesn't seem to be kidding when he says, "Figgered that out."

A long stare, a seething turmoil, growing. Then, ripping the unlit joint out of his mouth, briefly and suddenly flashfire-furious, "For godssake, I oughta hand you over to yer tribe 'n have 'em keep you somewhere outta the way."

Imogen Slaughter

Sat 01:00AM EST
He may not have meant it as a threat, but he can see, even as she's half curled in the chair, the lines of her body stiffen, muscles clench as he tosses the angry words at her. She leans forward, her hair falling down past her shoulders have obscuring the features of her face. "So." The single word tensely wrought. "Why th'fuck don'tch'ye?" Her forearms rest just above the knee, each slender hand gripping the opposite shoulder, ghosts of white from beneath the cuff of her dark shaded sweater.

Decker Rohl

Sat 01:12AM EST
His eyes widen, though she can't see it in the darkness. She can feel his temper flare, though, and she can see him takes a half-step forward -

- sag back against the glass. His arms refold over his chest after jamming the unlit joint back between his clenched teeth with an audible snap.

Guess.
Seething. Silence.

Imogen Slaughter

Sat 01:17AM EST
His flare of temper raises the hair on the back of her neck, and though he might not have thought it possible, her muscles tense further as he takes a half step forward, toward her.

He slouches back, and she relaxes minutely, the faintest slightest relaxation over the light bones and muscles of her frame.

Seething. Silence.

Decker Rohl

Sat 01:27AM EST
Yet another kind of silence. The types of quiet that unroll between them could fill a library. This: tense as a piano string, jangling as a piano string out of tune. A string, a wire, a live current, a hundred volts jammed through a line that carries ten.

"You know," these words do not slur together; there is nothing lazy about him now. In the darkness, he is as a razor, "why not. You know damn well why not."

Or maybe she didn't. It didn't matter. What mattered was that he would not - could not - say it. Not without frightening her, or at least frightening himself.

He turns - he turns his back to her - and throws her window open, letting in the frigid night. Leaning his upper body out, he lights up, and the scent of marijuana drifts away.

Imogen Slaughter

Sat 01:38AM EST
She had an idea, something that was half ignored, unless brought to a head in a moments like this. And no, she didn't want him to say anything.

Her silence is her answer to his declaration, and she sits for a few precious moments before getting to her feet with an easy curved movement, bare feet hitting the floor with an audible thump.

"At least we agree on that." She says finally, "probably tell me t'cover m'own ass, anyway," that was not to him, but to herself, as she begins walking to the small corner table that holds the answering machine and it's 150 mechanical messages. Ignoring it's flashing red light, she pulls open a drawer, presumably looking for something.

Decker Rohl

Sat 01:42AM EST
He'd had his hands braced on the windowsill, torso thrust outside the window at an angle that his head lifted above the line of the up-and-down sliding window. When he hears her feet thump to the ground, he half-twists to see what she was up to, then sinks down to rest his elbows on the windowsill instead.

A few more puffs and he's had enough. It was the time alone he needed, anyway. Putting the joint out, he considers what is left and lets it slip out of his slackening fingers, tumbling end over end into the bushes under her window.

Straightening inside, Decker slams her window shut and latches it. Then he crosses the room to stand beside her, watching to see what she was looking for rather than simply asking.

Imogen Slaughter

Sat 01:53AM EST
Whatever she was looking for, she didn't find it. She closes the drawer with one hand, pausing it inches from slamming it, and pressing it closed with a soft click.

The thumb of her left hand presses for a moment against the orbit of her eye, half paused for a moment, before it falls away, fingers brushing against the wood of the table as she twists around to face him, head tilting upward slightly to make up for the difference of nearly a foot or so in height (he may not be tall for his species, but anway you cut it, the good doctor is petite).

Like him nearly an hour ago, she nearly apologizes. Stops. In the end simply watches him; close enough know that he can see the tilt and direction of her eyes as she looks him over, an inch at a time.

Decker Rohl

Sat 01:58AM EST
The burnt scent of marijuana dissipates from his clothes and skin in concentric waves. They either fade into nothing or else her nose becomes acclimatized; either way, soon enough the scent seems gone from her consciousness, and she can hear him breathing: even and steady and quiet.

"Didn't find it?" he asks unnecessarily. For balance or reassurance, or merely something to do, he sets his fingers down on the tabletop, spread wide. Then, "What were you lookin' for?"

Imogen Slaughter

Sat 02:03AM EST
The faint red glow does very little to dissapate the shadows that have infiltrated the condominium, but it's enough for him to catch the faintest curl of her mouth, half guilty, though she answers honestly.

"Cigarettes," she replies, one hand slipping into the pocket of her jeans. Her breath is barely audible, a faint whisper of sound and a brief stirring of the air. "Seem t'be out."

Decker Rohl

Sat 02:10AM EST
The blinking red light draws his attention down. He shifts his arm enough to catch a glimpse of the number: 150. Jesus Christ. Didn't even know those little number-screens went into triple digits. His arm moves back into place, blocking the evidence of her hastily abandoned life, and he watches her hand steal into her pocket.

"Thought you was tryin' to quit." Had she told him that? Did it matter? --He neither moves toward her, nor away. When she speaks, he can barely hear her. When he breathes, he can smell her.

Imogen Slaughter

Sat 02:21AM EST
Because of where he stands, she has very little room to move, standing slightly to the side of the corner table, back almost against the wall. One hand shoved into her pocket, her other hand reaches up, dragging through curled and disarrayed locks, pushing errant and disagreeable strands away from her eyes, sending the mass back over her shoulders to tumble toward her back.

She cannot smell him, but his presence is like a constant thrum, felt through nerves and skin, his heat without touching him. His breath without stepping closer. The corner of her mouth stirs, briefly, "Apparently I am now," she replies to the conversation at hand, her hand leaving her hair to gesture at the table near which they both stand. "I'm all out."

Decker Rohl

Sat 02:31AM EST
"Think I got--" feeling around blindly, his eyes don't leave hers, "--yeah." It's too dark to see anything else, anyway. He finds the battered pack in a back pocket, produces it, and glances down briefly to see only the faintest glints of light off the foil-wrapped edges, opening the carton to shake one out. One of Lucian's that he'd confiscated off the young Skald some time ago. The exact time is blurred in his mind. Cheap tobacco in cheap paper, none of Rune's fancy colors.

He holds it out to her. Emphysema, cirrhosis. He still couldn't tell them apart. "Need a light?"

They're alone. In the small hours of the night. In her condo. In the dark. Four inches apart. Talking about cigarettes.

Imogen Slaughter

Sat 02:45AM EST
Emphysema. Though she makes a semi-decent effort for cirrhosis as well. She should know better. Grainy livers that indicate hyper tension, lungs blackened by soot and tar and arteries clogged by it's byproducts. Advanced cancer in forty year olds. Lungs. Liver. Heart. Her attempts to stop smoking never last long. She always has a new excuse to start again.

She reaches out to take the fag from his fingers. Any flicker of reaction as the four inches are broken, even for a second, could just as likely be a trick of the darkness. She's talking about cigarettes. But her eyes never leave his face. "Yeah. I'm also gonna have ta go outside."

Decker Rohl

Sat 03:12AM
"Yeah," he agrees. "Shouldn't smoke in..."

The 'here' is lost, not broken off, not trailed off. Simply lost and forgotten. As though he never heard her, he finds matches in the left thigh pocket, his left shoulder dropping as he digs it out. He strikes it hard against his thigh, the flame flaring briefly chemical purple-blue before settling into the red of a conventional wood flame.

By the guttering light of the match he can see her better than he had in the past half hour, hour. He brings the fastburning match toward her face, toward the end of her cigarette, and the light lends her fair skin a golden tone, lends the harsh lines of his face something that could almost be softness.

Reflected, the flame is golden in his grey eyes. He does not light her cigarette after all. A flick of his wrist shakes the match out and the acrid scent of smoke joins the acrid scent of ignition chemicals. The match falls from his fingers, skitters down the back of his hand, slips against the fabric sheathing his thigh, and then her calf, because he has drawn her forward by then, and his hands are in her hair.

The match hits the carpet and the last cherry is scattered. In the darkness, pressed to her, blindly seeking her touch, the Modi burns like a lightning storm.

Imogen Slaughter

Sat 03:34AM
It had occured to her briefly to protest as he'd lit the match, pupils contracting sharply as the tiny flame brings more light into the living room, than they'd seen since the light outside had died. A flick of his wrist and the match is extinguished sent tumbling end over end to scatter against the hard wood floor, leaving a smear of char against the boards.

It always seems to be like this, a meeting without any sort of consideration or thought (his hands in her hair) or even what would pass for a concious decision.

He's stronger than she is, and though it's him that pulled her towards him, she's the one with her back against the wall. He's stronger than she is. A press of her mouth against his, and her hands move along sweat shirt encased arms, and torso, scattering along the taut lines of war-moulded body.

Decker Rohl

Sat 04:00AM
The match scattered, then trod underfoot, her foot as he pulls her forward, then his as he pushes her back, tug-of-war, up against the wall. Sweatshirt, zipper, pull it, wrong way, down, open halfway, already pushing it off the shoulders and squirming out of it (he kisses her or she kisses him - ) catch at the waist, the zipper, pull it blindly apart, pool to the ground ( - like they might devour one another whole).

Somewhere in their half-savage pulling someone knocks the little table over and all 150 messages blinking on her machine crashes to the floor. He doesn't notice; he's lifting her to ride above and upon him with one arm while the other seeks skin under her clothes like a sandsnake seeks darkness on a hot. summer. day.

Love like a monsoon, typhoon. Love like a war. He's stronger than she is but her hunger could match his. Sweatshirt and sweater, wifebeater and bra,
clothes drop like so many forgotten yesterdays,
and then skin, skin, skin, skin.

After: bedroom. bed. Plain blue sheets against which her fair skin all but glowed. Somewhere out there, her unsmoked cigarette lolls on the ground. Stomach-down, face halfburied in pillows or sheets...whatever...one hand splayed over the skin of her stomach, the thumb gliding a lazy semicircle. Some cue known only to him strikes and he flips on his back in a jounce of bedsprings, raises himself up on elbows braced behind him, exhales long and lingeringly through his nose.

A different sort of silence, this.

Imogen Slaughter

Sat 04:25AM EST
She stirs as he moves, weight shifting as he jounces the bedsprings, twisting to her side and then to her stomach, the heel of one palm scrubbing against her face, before following the direction upward, to comb through hair, dampened from sweat. As the fingers drift through thick and curling locks, her attention shifts slight to run eyes down what is visible of his muscle, flesh, skin and scars and tattoos.

Things impossible to see in the mostly dim light of the bedroom, found only by touch and memory. The slash pattern of his tattoo, the curving sinuous lines of her arm b(r)and, both barely visible in the shadow of the room. One hand reaches out, a thumb running lightly across the inked lines, the slashes and patterns, half savage by design. Fingers cool against his flesh, in comparison to the warmth that is nearly inhuman.

Her head tilts slightly, to move curled strands from her face, the waved and kinked length swirling and twisting, creating designs against the blue fabric, like a foreign language.

Decker Rohl

Sat 04:34AM EST
A canine's body temperature is several degrees higher than a human's. Perhaps that's where his heat come from, in the end: the animal part of him, the untamed and savage part that he keeps hidden under his human skin so often, that sometimes bursts forth so terrifyingly.

The coolness of her fingers on his skin is pleasant, as is the distant ache in his muscles. He turns to look at her hand running over the tattoo, then follows the line of her arm back to her. Such a contrast the hues of her body are to the bland, dark, somber color she had chosen for her bed.

After a moment, he sinks down again, one hand crossing his chest to join hers over his tattoo - briefly, thoughtfully. Then it comes to a rest on his stomach and he watches the lights behind his eyes swim in the darkness of her bedroom.

"They put it on me when they found me," he tells her quietly, unsure of why. "Like brandin' a bull. Get of Fenris ain't meant nothin' to me then, so I hated it. Was fifteen. My First Change wasn't my first kill, but it was the first time I killed somethin' with my hands. 'N teeth.

"Guess after a while I got used to it, though. Guess I kinda like it now."

Imogen Slaughter

Sat 04:43AM EST
She's quiet for several moments, her fingers pale against his slightly darker flesh, a snow grey in the shadows. Her silence is infinite as he tells her the closest to a story as he like ever would.

The light movement of her thumb against the tattoo halts as his hand raises to cover her's, but the hand remains there after he's removed it, her eyes following the pattern of ink for a moment, drifting away, perhaps in the direction of her own dark insignia, before dark eyes turning back to him. A pause, the space between a heart beat.

"It bothers you." The phrase lilts at the end, it's almost a question, as if she wasn't sure to ask him the obvious, or make the mistake of being wrong.

Decker Rohl

Sat 04:54AM EST
His head turns on her pillow and he looks at her, that line appearing between his eyebrows: a little puzzled, perhaps a little bothered. His eyes are almost black in this light, as are hers. Darkness strips color away until all that remains are shades of grey.

All his life is shades of grey.

His right hand lifts from his stomach and tucks behind his head, raising his angle of sight enough that the sheets and pillows do not block his view of her. And he merely watches her for the longest of pauses that is not, for once, fraught with tension.

"I don't know. I mean--I'm Fenrir. Was my choice and I ain't ashamed of that. But this," a shrug of the left shoulder, causing the tattoo to stir on his arm, "wasn't."

Imogen Slaughter

Sat 05:04AM EST
Something in a shade of grey.
Something in between.

She watches him as he looks at her, weight shifting slightly as she pillows her head with her right hand, her left hand leaving his arm to draw hair over her neck; to avoid smothering herself or him in a cloud of hair.

A faint frown creases her brow, nodding her head slightly, after a moment. "I understand what'ye mean. But ..." a faint shrug, "It's there, so what can be done about it?" Except rip it out.

It's not just his tattoo she means when she speaks. Branded like a bull. Branded like cattle. She means more than understanding the concept that he's imparting, so much as knowing specifically how it could bother him. The way it bothers her.

Decker Rohl

Sat 05:23AM EST
When his frown reflects on her brow, a flicker of a smirk (smile) crosses his lips, tugging one side up higher than the other. "Nothin'," he drawls, turning to on his side to face her. The tattoed arm hooks up to pillow his head and, intentionally or otherwise, the glyph is hidden. His strong fingers slip into the unrepentant disarray of her hair, lifting the last strands over her shoulder. "'S the curse of bein' purebred."

He touches her boldly - even from the start, he had never shied from invading the space of another - but lingeringly, perhaps wonderingly. Shoulder, breast, trace the center of her abdomen to her navel, hip. Twenty-eight years of life to his nineteen. Finally, as she had touched his tattoo, he touches hers, and closes his hand over it. Obliterates it, if only for a moment.

Then he rolls again on his back, his hand returning rest on his stomach. A glance over at her alarm clock, the numbers glowing red, the only artificial light lingering the room. "Sleepin'," he tells her, quiet. "Night, Imogen."

Imogen Slaughter

Sat 05:34AM EST
A faint sound of an amusement, too wry to be a chuckle sounds in the back of her throat as he speaks of being pure bred, hand moving to cover his own as he covers her tattoo, the mark of her tribe on her flesh.

Dark eyes follow his as he looks at the clock, and if he'd looked, he would have seen the look of consternation. The knowledge that the amount of sleep she'll get today could probably be measured in small moments, brief snatches. She never sleeps deeply, the fact her pager is likely to go off (from the other room, resulting in momentary confusion) within a few hours does not help things.

After three seconds of quiet reminescence of sleep, she ceases the mental badgering, nodding her head slightly as she settles on her side, shutting her eyes against what she knows is the soon coming dawn. "Good night."