Close Encounters.

WHO: Grayson, Zoe and Pandect (with a guest appearance by Amy before she was a PC).
WHEN: Evening, after Grayson and Zoe's dinner.
WHERE: The Lamplighter Motel.

Laughter carried down the street and heralded the pair's approach. Full and happy, the two of them had enjoyed a good dinner and even better conversation. Zoe's cheeks were pink from the cold and she laughed again, brown eyes focused on her companion. Even after being separated for as long as they had, Zoe and Grayson had fallen back into step without so much as a stumble. The female was comfortable walking in stride beside her Alpha, happily focused on him and on the old memories they had both dragged up to laugh over.

"It feels like that was... ages ago. You make me feel so old!" The admonition came with a bright smile to show that she wasn't serious at all. "Quit doing that. I'm trying to enjoy my fading youth over here."

It was so natural for wolves to be together, even in twos or threes and not the numbers a pack could boast, that Grayson had almost all but forgotten that he'd been by himself as long as he had. He felt more comfortable and at ease than he had in a long time though, he recognized that much, enough to remind him that their kind were not designed to be alone. Sad as it was, he couldn't remember the last time he had laughed. Before tonight, that was. Tonight he'd laughed more than he had in years. He'd forgotten how good it felt.

"Old? Hey now, I'm older than you. Careful." The warning was ruined by the wide smile on his face and the audible mirth in his words as they approached Zoe's current place of residence, the motel where she had been holed up in the time she'd been shadowing Grayson in Marquette. He was still kicking himself for not realizing before now, but it was water under the bridge and she was pack; he couldn't be angry with her. Taking one look at the building, the male wolf immediately deemed it unfitting for one of his wolves, but he held his tongue. His apartment was hardly anything to boast about.

Pandect shifted into park and jumped out of his truck, the bag of Amy's things under his arm. After sleeping her night shift off in Pandect's bed Amy had stolen one of Pandect's shirts since her own were apparently unacceptable for the temperature inside the lobby. He wasn't going to comment on that, Amy had a childlike trust concerning the nature and providences of friendship. (That and she had said she always borrowed her brother's coat when it was too cold and he just sort of gave in. But he had insisted on getting her clothes from her apartment.)

He slung his haversack onto his back and headed toward the lobby where he was pretty sure Amy was still sighing over the muffin that Jamie had made. He only hoped Jamie remained oblivious. He wasn't sure how he felt about boys and Amy. Even boys like Jamie. Especially now that he knew Jamie had had a child, not that he wasn't sure Jamie was the sort of man to cherish a child of his own. It just meant that Jamie knew how to do certain things. Certain things that the big brother in Pandect preferred that Amy didn't do. Ever.

"You're a year older," Zoe laughed. "Leader or no, we are not that far apart."

Maybe the Lamplighter wasn't the finest establishment in all of Marquette, but it was clean(ish), and reasonable priced. So long as Zoe had a roof over her head and a comfortable place to sleep at night, she wasn't going to be terribly picky. At least there weren't hookers skanking about.

"Thanks for dinner, Grayson." They reached her door and the female leaned against the painted wood, her dimpled smile bright.

"Thanks for letting me pay," he returned with a healthy hint of sarcasm in his voice, coming to a stop with her beside her door with one hand reaching out to rest against the wall to his left. "We'll have to find you that library job sooner rather than later," he went on, "especially if I'm the one buying the food around here until you find yourself some employment." It was all spoken with a joking lilt that only members of his pack had ever really been able to draw out of him, and for that, he was oddly grateful. It had been too long since he had been this comfortable around another person, wolf or otherwise, and he hoped that Zoe could comprehend that just by studying his body language; there was no tension or aggression, nothing outside of the relaxed contentment that had settled in for the long haul during their nostalgic talk at the diner and on the way here.

Pandect wasn't really one for taking in every single detail around him, it was enough to know whether or not the people around him were paying attention to what he was doing or not. Preferably not. He didn't waste time on faces, ages or otherwise. Hooking Amy's clothes over his shoulder he put a little distance between himself and the couple standing by one of the rooms. At first he was a little irritated, the Lamplighter had a strict 'no hourly business' sort of policy, but there was a familiarity that dissuaded him that was the case. Besides, if it was he wasn't going to step in the middle of that situation.

It was just someone walking their lady friend to the door. That was nice, he wasn't sure that men did that any more. Everyone was having a romance now it seemed.

She saw movement out of the corner of her eye and glanced that way on instinct. The passing man's name escaped her, but he seemed all right -- he'd fixed the broken lamp in her room without a fuss. Zoe smiled at him, briefly, before she returned her attention to Grayson. Her Alpha was granted a crooked grin;

"Ahh, the sarcasm. How I've missed it. And people said you had no sense of humor."

"They were the ones who enjoyed rubbing me the wrong way," Grayson pointed out as if educating someone, but he said it with a smile on his face, still leaning against the wall as casually as can be, as though he belonged there rather than at his own apartment building. In a way, that was true; one of his pack was living here, and in a roundabout way, that made her little section of the building his too. At least in his wolf's eyes.

He didn't see the man who passed them, but he did smell him. His brain fired at once, and his head lifted, eyes immediately focusing on the origin of the unique scent. He knew that man. His sense of smell had recognised him first, a wolf's capacity for scent memory alerting him to the fact, but his face was familiar too. He'd been at Babylon the night he'd broken up a fight between two men; the one here had been the calmer of the two, all too ready to forget about such a disturbance unlike the other who had been begging for a fight.

Amy must have been waiting at the window for him, the moment he got within sight of the office she opened the door and made happy sounds over his bag, still wearing his shirt. "You got all my stuff?"

"Of course Amy," Pandect was starting to regret letting Amy stay in his room while her apartment was in disarray. She just sort of assumed that magically meant that Pandect was the big brother she had always wanted. His bed better not smell like her floral shampoo, that would just be undignified. "How's the desk?"

"Not busy, although the thermostat in two isn't working again."

Pandect nodded, pulling his big keyring out of his pocket, "I'll get right on that."

Subtle though Grayson's reaction was, Zoe caught it. She shifted, quirking an eyebrow and glancing over to the strange man again as he spoke with a female in the manager's room. "You know him?" she murmured to Grayson, meeting his gaze again.

If anyone was going to catch his reaction, it would be Zoe, which, naturally, made sense. Not only were they of the same race, but she had experience with him; she'd lived in his community before, essentially grown up with him, even if they hadn't been close at all. "He was at the club where I work the other night," Grayson told his fellow wolf in dropped tones, for her ears only. "He and another guy almost got in a fight. I had to cut in." True, if any violence had actually been initiated, the wards would have activated and removed both men from the premises, but it was still part of Grayson's job to keep things from reaching that point. "The other one was the real aggressor, from what I could tell, but you never know." Already he was uncomfortable with the idea of Zoe being in the building if that man lived here too, or even if he simply worked there. The paranoia of an Alpha was hard to shift, even long after he had lost his pack.

"Come on, let's just go inside." Technically Zoe hadn't invited him in, but Grayson wasn't comfortable standing outside the door with an unknown supernatural standing not too far away. The man might not have done anything to provoke him at Babylon, but he had still been a part of it. Better to leave the area and avoid the mere potential for trouble than run the risk of anything unwelcome happening by lingering. With a small nod, Zoe unlocked her door and went inside; after staring across at the familiar man for a few seconds longer, Grayson followed her inside, closing the door behind him.

Pandect was too far away to hear what the couple was saying, but he caught the movement of the woman's head, the painful artificial light catching on her dark hair and the answering move from the man's head. He moved automatically between the pair and Amy. His spine went hard and unyielding, like an electrical current had been run through it and his head came up sharply, there was no question he was alert, at the ready. He couldn't help it, it was an automatic response to protect, defend. Amy was saying something, he wasn't sure what, probably something girly and patted him on the shoulder before he was able to direct her back inside.

He narrowed his eyes at the two of them, taking them in, before he quickly and noticeably changed his whole posture, slouching, ducking his head, looking open and harmless as possible. Nothing to see here, just the janitor. He had a job to do after all.