Linespiration, Raze Style.

I was listening to the song "Bruises" by Chairlift and loved the lines of the male singer mid-way through the song. "I grabbed some frozen strawberries so I could ice your bruising knees, but frozen things they all unfreeze and now I taste like... All those frozen strawberries I used to ice your bruising knees, hot July ain't good to me. I'm pink and black and blue for you." The imagery of someone doctoring someone's hurt knees with frozen strawberries was just too sickeningly sweet, so I thought it would be fun to throw a werewolf and werewolverine at it by dragging the linespiration into the world of Raze. Enter Lucas and Claire:

Beethoven's 9th symphony was playing so loudly that even humans would have heard it before reaching the driveway. Lucas's brow raised; this didn't seem like Gabe's choice in music at all, and Evelyn wouldn't be awake this early in the day. Indeed, the werebear's beat up Chevy was absent from the driveway, suggesting that the only individual home who might be listening was Claire. He grinned as he parked and headed towards the front door, steadying himself with his cane; so she was a fan of classical music? Perhaps he could take her to one of the symphonic orchestra concerts held in Missoula every weekend in July.

Weaving through the house, which still felt more Sreya's than his own, Lucas sought the source of the din. His stereo had been moved to the middle of the kitchen table, angled toward the opened window, which currently lay in the shade of a ladder. If he struggled to hear over the music - at this volume and proximity, a symphony reduced to a tintamar - he thought he detected footfalls on the roof. A glob of damp, decaying pine needles suddenly dropping from the heavens to the ground below immediately explained Claire's peculiar perch. Evelyn had complained about water seeping into the basement with the previous night's rain due to the gutters overflowing, after all.

Lucas left the cane propped against the table and eased open the side door carefully, hoping to avoid any jettisoned gutter waste. Climbing the ladder gave his shins a dull ache that reminded him of darker days, but he ignored the pain until his palms met the top rung. There, rump in the air in an undignified crouch over the gutter was Claire, slender arms begrimed to the elbow. He tried, for the sake of politeness, to ignore the curve of her buttocks peeking over her shorts as she reached forward.

“Claire?” The name had barely left his mouth and she was startled airborne, wheeling to face him with her delicate lips pulled back in a snarl that looked too fearsome for blunt human teeth. It was an impressive reaction time, but with such a precarious perch her instinct’s haste sent her feet flailing over the edge of the gutter. For a desperate moment she grappled the slick gray slate shingles, wet fingertips finding no yield, before falling from the roof.

Lucas gaped for a moment then rushed forward, peering over the roof’s edge with a reluctance born of guilt. Claire was hunched on the earth casting a gaze somewhere between embarrassed and baleful his way. She hadn’t fallen badly enough to be seriously injured, thank goodness, but her knees had struck the hard, rocky earth below; glacial regions weren’t known for a forgiving landscape. He could see dark bruises blossoming beneath the shallow red scrapes that were just barely threatening to bleed.

The werewolf, without thinking, vaulted from the roof, gritting his teeth at the shock in his aching bones as his feet slammed to the earth. He crouched in front of Claire, who did not speak but merely breathed heavily with wide eyes, her energy a prickling electricity as she tried to recover from the spook. Lucas’s fingertips hovered over her knees tentatively. As he moved to touch one of the wounds, a low rumble sounded from deep in her chest. He scuttled back rapidly, palms raised and eyes averted submissively. Then, he had an idea.

“Wait here.” Lucas turned and bounded up the stairs, making a bee-line for the kitchen. Not being a fan of the frozen, prepared meals that were fast becoming an American dietary staple, he hadn’t even opened the freezer since purchasing Sreya’s house. He hoped she was at least a fan of ice cubes in her drinks, and was disappointed to find none awaiting him in the unit’s fluorescent chill. However, crumpled and forgotten in the rear of the freezer, he spied a bag of frozen strawberries. Good enough.

Outside, Claire was wiping her hands free of gutter sludge on the sides of her powder blue tank top, ignoring her wounded knees. They had turned an angry purple, and while both the scrapes and bruises would heal in mere hours among their kind, the pain therians experienced was still very much real. Lucas knelt before her, looking at her injuries but not her eyes with his head lowered; being submissive was never contrived for him.

He extended the bag of strawberries. She did not growl this time, and he scooted closer, slowly laying the package over her closest knee. She flinched with the coldness and curled her lip slightly, but did not lash out nor pull away. Gradually, the tension began to leave her body, and she finally dared a sheepish smile.

“Thank you.“ The stereo had gone silent as The 9th concluded, and Lucas could detect barest hint of a French Canadian accent in the sonorous tones of her voice. It was one of many things he found pleasant about her.

“I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to startle you.” The sun was hot against the back of his neck as he kept his head lowered, eyes fixed on Claire’s slender legs under the bulky burden of the frozen strawberries. Only now did he realize that the bag had several punctures; as its contents thawed in the heat of the July air, the heat of their bodies, cool viscous pink was leaking out. Lucas’s fingers were sticky with fruit syrup. It ran in a sweet sluggish rivulet down the front of Claire’s shin. “Oh… I’m sorry, I didn’t realize -”

Claire cut him off with a trill of laughter, running an index finger up her leg and licking the strawberry juice off of its tip delicately. She gently grasped his hand and lifted it along with the package, her pale knee pink and black and blue beneath. She took the strawberries and placed them on the ground, but maintained her grasp on his hand, lifting his palm towards her. Her tongue flicked quickly across his skin, and she peered up at him with smiling blue eyes.

“You’re very sweet, Lucas.”