Who: James Kincaid and Sadie. What: James goes out for a run and finds some company. Warnings: I used the 'n' word once. Not flippantly. Status: Complete/finished.
The pedometer on the waistband of his baggy running shorts clicked over to 21.0 and James smiled at it a bit breathlessly. A few more miles and he could head back. While the exercise routine might've seemed excessive and obsessive to any human, even the most dedicated athlete, James had werewolf stamina and took his role in the pack very seriously. He needed to be in excellent shape in either form, and there was no excuse for letting himself get lazy or complacent just because things were calm right now in Colorado Springs.
Wearing a tight heather-gray t-shirt that was now plastered to his muscular torso with sweat and those baggy red workout shorts, his newest pair of sneakers on his feet (the boy went through them like tissues due to wearing out the soles, and it seemed like every month or two he was going to Foot Locker to find a new pair), he looked like ex-military, maybe a cop. He knew the short burr of his hair and the neatly-trimmed facial hair did nothing to mollify people when they were intimidated by him; everything about his body was no-nonsense and business.
Rachel, though, teasing him, and Madeline telling him he shouldn't be so serious. Was he too serious? He'd always been this way, even as a little boy when he was still human. Maybe it was because he'd known even then that danger was always just around the corner, that the wrong look on his face or the wrong speed to his stride would draw attention from the white men who already called him 'uppity nigger boy' and plotted how to keep him and his high-yellow mama out of the stores and shops. It had gotten so bad with Mama that some of the shopkeepers wouldn't sell her groceries, claiming that they were out when there were baskets and bushels of what she needed sitting in plain sight, and that her money was no good there. She had never complained, had just thinned her lips into a narrow white line and pulled James's hand, leading him back to the streets and they would walk across town to find someone who would sell to them.
So maybe with that kind of mentality hanging over his head, the idea that the blade could drop at any time, it had honed James's sense of awareness and kept him from ever becoming totally relaxed and comfortable. Being a werewolf had just given him a sense of direction, a purpose. Half of these pups now thought it was a movie, that their duties were to play a role dictated by The Howling or An American Werewolf in London. There was very little to be romanced or trumped up for theatrics, in James's eyes; you simply were a wolf, just like he had always simply been black. Some were born, some were made, but once the lycanthrope blood was in you, you answered its call.
He had begun his run at the Texans' hotel, stretching a little to warm up, chugging a bottle of water to keep him hydrated for the first part of the run. It had been eight AM, later than he usually liked to start, but the day was crisp and sunny, a bite of spring chill still in the air that early in the day, and he had now made a wide loop through the woods and up a bike trail, then back down and into the city. He liked to test different terrains, strengthening his ankles and calves, challenging himself to leap over streams and climb over boulders and even scale trees in a few cases just to prove that he could. It was also his way of exploring the terrain while in human form, looking at things differently than he would have in his furrier form.
Now that he was on the city streets, he slowed his pace to a more reasonable jog, feeling the blood throbbing in his veins. He wasn't winded, but he was beginning to feel the pull in his lungs of breathlessness. He needed to sit for a few minutes and recharge, have a drink to make up for the sweat pouring off his body.