Nic and Lem
Once the change was over and wolf-Carson was unconscious and they were safe for a while, Lem had left the boys downstairs to talk about tranquilizer guns and taken Rylee up for a drink. The poor girl had looked like she needed one. She seemed nice enough, if a little out of place with this crowd. Not that that mattered. They’d had a nice enough chat -- Lem was so bad at small talk, she thought, but having a werewolf in the basement was sort of an icebreaker. But eventually she’d started to worry about Nic, so she’d wrapped it up to go back downstairs.
Because she’d pretty badly wanted to hold his hand while Cason turned into a monster, she’d been acutely aware of his reaction to the change. Hands over his ears, looking pained. Lem wasn’t sure if anybody else had really noticed -- Zania, probably -- but if they did, they didn’t know about the telepathy. That was what had her worried most of all as she descended the stairs to find Nic. She paused long enough to acknowledge Nick’s goodbye as the big “expert” passed her on his way out, trying not to be annoyed with even the brief interruption in focus on her quasi-boyfriend.
There had been a moment there, when Carson had shifted, that Nic thought his head was going to explode. He knew there was a possibility that he’d have a werewolf in his head, but he hadn’t had any idea what that would sound like. It had come on him hard and fast, the sound of rage and hunger blasting through his mind like a blowhorn and it still echoed in his head long after they’d knocked him out. The pain had subsided though and for that he was thankful. He wasn’t sure how much use he’d be to anyone if it felt like an iron spike was being driven into his brain all night.
By the time Nick finished going over the tranquilizer guns with them, Nic was feeling close to normal again. It was going to be a long night, probably with very little sleep, but it was a relatively good group to stay up with once Nick left. He looked up with Lem re-entered the basement and gave her a little smile. With Nick gone and Carson knocked out, all potential threats had been neutralized, at least for the time being, so they could just sit back and chill together.
Lem smiled back, and it came more naturally than most of her smiles had felt so far tonight. She just wasn’t good with people, especially people who seemed so normal. Normal was weird in her world. But Nic was just the right kind of abnormal, and she was very happy to sit down with him. Gazing at the unconscious werewolf in the case, Lem sighed and slipped her arm through Nic’s, leaning over to rest her head on his shoulder. “You okay?” she asked quietly. He’d seemed all right after Carson got knocked out, but she still wanted to check out loud.
Nic gave Lem’s arm a little squeeze, then pressed a kiss to the top of her head. He knew she wasn’t thrilled to have so many people in the house, especially so many strangers, but with Carson knocked out and Nick gone, it was really just Rylee, plus him and Zania. And they weren’t exactly strangers at that point. Or, he wasn’t, and he thought she trusted Zania well enough. “Yeah,” he answered. “It’s kind of this dull throbbing now, but it’s not that bad. I think it’ll be gone soon enough.” As someone prone to the occasional migraine, this wasn’t bad at all, at least not now. “We really need to learn to tune each other out.”
Things were definitely more comfortable for Lem with only one conscious unfamiliar person in the house, especially since Rylee was a girl. Nic was Nic and Zan was Zan and Vex was Vex, so they were all okay. She tilted her head to look up at Nic’s face, though she couldn’t see all of it from that angle. “What was it like?” she asked softly, intensely curious about that now that she knew he was feeling better. “Like were there ... thoughts? I can’t imagine losing my human brain, you know?”