.the girl next door

[.xander;;]

despite administration’s reluctance to put a live mine into a room full of ditzy people, xander’s psychiatrist had ordered him a rather silly prescription. it was socialization.

though the guy probably already knew it, xander was not one to socialize. he probably wouldn’t bother going up and talking to someone if his life depended on it. mind, he didn’t literally talk to anyone, but the point stands. caleb xander was not a people person. hell, he wasn’t even an animal person. he was an inanimate object person.

current inanimate object was the book katze had lent him, tales of me. in all honesty, the avid reader found it rather corny, but it was literature. that was good enough for him. he supposed he loved reading so much because it always put him in another place, in another’s shoes, and basically every situation that he could not achieve himself. though this book was meant to be disturbing, he felt that it couldn’t compare to his state of affairs, and that was what made it worthwhile.

he didn’t read a lot in one sitting, nor did he read very fast. sometimes he read an entire page twice just in case he missed something. he preferred to take everything in that he possibly could, and it made the experience all the more enjoyable. although he was making no human interaction sitting alone on the couch in the corner, he was pretty content. when he had first come in right after lunch, he had been disappointed that his one friend [whom he had not seen in over a month] was not present in the room. by now, around two, he had been lost to the multi-dimensional pages of one of his biggest passions. not even the obnoxiousness of the other patients in the rec room bothered him, and he had almost completely forgotten about the enormous guard standing beside the couch.

[&Andromeda]

Today was an extremely boring day. Andromeda hated being a high risk patient. If she'd had her knives right then, all of these quacks would be begging for their lives. Like she'd give them a chance. They were the ones who needed to be locked up. Not her. She hadn't done anything to deserve this. They should have just left her alone. The crumbling streets of the city dump she'd come out of were much more appealing and liberating than a padded cell and a straitjacket.

She'd finally gotten them to get rid of the straitjacket. No one would talk to her when she hobbled around in that thing. It was embarrassing. She just had to keep her anger in check and not strangle her guard. Or anyone else's guard. That's what they'd told her anyway. Be a good little puppy and you get freedom.

They didn’t know shit about freedom if they thought this was it. Things were basically the same as they were before she'd gotten her freedom. Unfortunately the ability to use your hands wasn’t all it was brought up to be. Especially considering she only had one to use. Her left arm was essentially not an arm. It was wooden. When Andromeda got really bored she would shake it back and forth and form the jointed hand into the bird sign. And flip everyone off with it.

That's what she'd been doing all day so far. Flipping people off with her wooden hand while sitting in a saggy old couch in the recreation room. If anyone reacted to it she'd then stick her tongue out at them.

Finally, her guard did something about it. In fact he might have been giving her these hate-filled looks all day, but she couldn’t remember. Anyway, now he grabbed her wooden hand with his own real one made of flesh, and he twisted it off from the wrist.

"Stop it," he snarled at the brown-skinned girl, his brown eyes seeming to be lit with an inner fire.

Feeling extremely pissed off, Andromeda started to form her other hand into a fist to smash it into her guard's face. About halfway there she stopped abruptly, remembering the straitjacket. Fist hovering in the air, she gave the blondie a death glare. He smiled back at her smugly and put her hand in his pocket. Pouting, the bluenette ignored him as best as she could and gazed around the room. Maybe she should try talking to someone now. I mean, she wasn’t in the straitjacket anymore. How hard could it be?

A lonely brunette in the corner caught her attention. He wasn’t very far from her. Something was in his hands that he was looking at intently. Curious, she got up and walked over, then plopped down on the couch beside him. Sitting what might be considered by him to be too close for comfort. She didn’t have much of a sense of finesse. Further proving this, she leaned over hi s shoulder to stare at the strange symbols on the page.

"Hiya, Howler," she said in greeting, remembering the guy from the room next to hers. He'd been making quite the racket a few weeks ago. She pointed at the book with a brown finger. "What the Hell is that? Some kind of spell book? Are you a wizard?" She examined his face. "Nah. You don’t look like a wizard. Plus you howl more like a wolf. Are you a wolfman? I've always wanted to meet a wolfman!" A wide grin spread across her face. Behind her, her guard was rolling his eyes in exasperation and running his fingers through his hair.

[.xander;;]

no, he was not a people person. nor did he like surprises. he especially disliked surprises. did a crazy blue-haired troll bouncing over to him and plopping down right beside him while he was completely engrossed in a book fall under “surprises?”

hell yes.

the moment she showed up beside him, xander growled audibly in surprise and jumped away. he had been on the edge of the couch, so this left him crouching on the arm of the sofa with his back pressed up against the wall. the book was now on the ground, flipped upside down. its spine would be screwed up and the brunet had lost his page. once he picked it back up, he’d be pretty ticked off about that.

but right now he had more pressing matters to attend to, like this nutcase that had just practically pounced on him and was now blabbing away to him like a madman. then again, this was an asylum. she was a madman. honestly, he was too freaked out to even begin getting out his notepad to ask her to kindly fuck off and instead stayed where he was, growling and bristling.

stan looked from the girl to her guard. he recognized the patient as the one who resided in the room next to xander’s, and the guard was none other than the beloved georg. they sure were switching him around a lot lately. how many different people had he guarded in the last year? they probably kept moving him around so much because he always gave the patients more problems than they already had. he pissed stan off to a dangerous extent, but unlike georg, stan was mature enough to ignore him. instead, he looked firmly at andromeda and said very seriously, “if you get any closer, you’ll meet the wolfman’s fangs.”

his speaking woke xander up to the fact that he had to do something. he knew that being touched would set off the wolf, but how could she? he didn’t take pleasure in the thought of tearing someone--with only one hand, he noticed--apart. silencing the growl, he slipped his hand into his chest pocket and produced his little notepad and pen. he proceeded to write something down and shove it at her, but not too close.

please get away from me. he hated using nice words like “please” with people who freaked him out, but sometimes that was the only thing that hit home. besides that, he really didn’t want to transform and cause a ruckus in this room filled with people.

[&Andromeda]

The way the guy totally went berserk on her was unnerving. She wondered if it had something to do with whatever his problem was. He was snarling and growling like a bear that had just gotten its face slammed into a bucket of tar. Although instead of fear or terror or even slight unease most of all the blue-haired girl just looked plain curious. She looked over at Stan with wide brown eyes and considered his words.

"Fangs?" she asked, back to examining the brittle Xander. "He doesn't look like he's got any fangs. Or does he transform? That would be aweso--" she was cut off when the notepad was shoved at her. She looked at the symbols on the page with a blank expression. Then back at the wolfman. "Uh… I don’t get it."

From behind her Georg snickered, and not a moment later was leaning over her shoulder to read what was on the paper. She grimaced as she felt his clothing touch her on the cheek. That man crept her out. It was even worse when he touched her with his hands. They were long and bony and gross.

"He wants you to get away from him," her guard told her, finally straightening up and resuming his original position. Andromeda glared at him over her shoulder briefly, then looked back at Xander. And scooted over on the couch a bit.

"Do I smell bad or something?" she asked him, sniffing her armpits. "Nope. I took a shower this morning. What's wrong with you, then? Is it your spell book? If so you don’t have to worry. I can't read spell books. And how come you don’t say anything? Do you have a wolf's voice box or something? So all you can do is growl? Can you bark too?"

[.xander;;]

xander caught on pretty quick. she couldn’t read. as weird as that was, not much surprised him anymore. you see it all when you live in a quack shack.

he noticed how the girl held georg in regard. he couldn’t say he blamed her. that man was trouble.

then she decided to get closer. the lycanthrope had only growled previously, but now he gave a feral snarl. did he have a wolf’s voicebox? yes. and right now, that wolf’s voice box was saying, “get the fuck out!”

when that didn’t work, he stepped off the couch and behind stan. this chick didn’t know when to let up, which freaked him out a little bit. he had dealt with her kind before. usually they only bothered him for their own pleasure, to make fun of him or something. and usually, they stopped and left him alone after he gave them what they wanted--answers, reactions, basically anything that they could laugh at. while he despised being made fun of, he hated people bugging him even more. and currently, andromeda was bugging him a lot. the man wrote something else on the notepad and showed stan instead of the patient.

“i’m not your translator!” the big guy said defensively. xander whimpered quietly, withdrawing the pad. at this, stan grumbled and grabbed his hand, reading his words.

there was a reason stan’s touch didn’t set xander off. it was not coincidence. only a couple of months after stan and dan had been assigned to him, the aforementioned had made the mistake of looking the lycanthrope in the eyes--a sign of challenge to a wolf. the brawl that ensued left them both injured--majorly, xander’s jaw dislocated and rib broken, and stan’s wrist sprained and neck torn open. but most importantly, it had established stan’s position as alpha. he had been two seconds away from pounding the werewolf’s face in when it had finally shown submission. after that, stan never had any personal problems with xander’s feral side. well, until his recent run-in with dr. katze.

“he says you don’t smell bad. he can bark. and he says he’ll kill you if you touch him, and he doesn’t mean that as a threat.”

xander stared with a straight face at andromeda from behind his wall-like guard.

[&Andromeda]

Andromeda curled up into a comfortable position on the couch, her knees drawn up to her chest. With her frizzy blue hair she looked almost cute. In a really weird way. If you were into girls like that. She observed Xander and the guard with large eyes that were very demanding and greedy for information.

"Well how come you can touch him?" she asked, wrinkling her nose. "Do you not like girls? I'm not a girl. I'm actually a plant. I photosynthesize with my fingernails. Except since they put me in this place I haven't been getting enough nutrients. They won't lemme outside. What's up with them? It's like they think I'm gonna kill someone. I only kill people when they piss me off. And they're pissing me off. It's like they're asking for it."

She talked like she was amped up on gasoline. A complete motor mouth. She had to pause to take a breath.

"And I don’t think you could kill me, Howler," she told Xander solemly. "For one, wolfmen don’t eat plants. For two, I'm a hardcore killer. I bet I'd be a good match. I bite worse than a venus fly trap." She grinned to reveal canines that were a lot pointier than normal. It was possible that sometime in the past she had filed them that way. Or it could be natural. "See? So there's nothing you gotta worry about!" A triumphant look overtook her features.

[.xander;;]

oh.

oh wow.

was she ever going to shut up? xander’s ears started to hurt after a while. even later, he thought his head was going to explode. then she had stopped. the one with oversensitive hearing was visibly relieved at the awaited silence.

a plant? really? everyone in this joint was so full of bullshit it was unnerving. doctors that had the ability to love, genetically enhanced housecats, and girls convinced they were plants? unreal. impossible. but who was a clinical lycanthrope to think someone else was full of bs?

stan spoke to the girl with a matter-of-fact tone, “do you want to see the scars from when it was established that we can touch?”

in protest, xander whined some more. he didn’t want andromeda to become more interested in them. if they only gave her what she wanted and nothing more, eventually she’d go away. he hoped. but as long as they kept feeding her, she’d never leave them alone. that was all xander wanted. was it really too much to ask for? some peace and quiet? apparently so. he almost wished he was back in solitary confinement.

she was not a plant. she should get over being kept inside. she wasn’t the only one. she was revolting for wanting to kill people. she could easily be killed by him. stan had had a rough time, and he was twice as big as xander. andromeda was half his size. he’d fucking eat her, especially when he had teeth just as sharp.

he wrote some more. stan translated some more. “he doesn’t mind girls. he doesn’t believe you’re a plant. he says the people here are dicks and that’s why they keep you all locked up. and he is worried. so don’t go near him.” that last bit had been stan’s own addition, but andromeda didn't need to know that.

[&Andromeda]

Andromeda shifted forward and closer to Stan so she could get a better view.

"Yeah!" she exclaimed excitedly. "Are they large? Did he bite you? If he bit you wouldn’t that make you a wolfman too? Or did you cure yourself before the full moon?"

She found these two to be immensely interesting. She'd never had a chance to meet a real live wolfman before. Even better, she'd never had a chance to meet someone who'd gotten into a fight with a wolfman and survived. The guy's guard was a giant to her. He looked like he ate nails for breakfast. That of course had to have given him a considerable advantage when the two had had at each other. But Andromeda was sure she could keep her own in a fight with Howler too. She'd kept her own in fights with metal-pumping sweaty men plenty of times, and had won.

Maybe someday she'd be able to get a taste of the wolfman's power.

The girl frowned when she heard that Xander didn’t think she was a plant. That was outrageous. Of course she was a plant.

"Then how do you explain why I can photosynthesize with my fingernails?" she asked him, wiggling the fingers of her only hand.

"And yeah, they're all a load of dicks. Especially Georg. He's the biggest dick of them all. Except not literally I'm sure. Only mentally."

From behind her the aforementioned guard's face turned a bright red. He started to reach out as if to strangle the girl, then stopped himself. His smoldering eyes were pinned on the back of the girl's head.

"What's he worried about?"

[.xander;;]

stan took it upon himself to continue the conversation without waiting for xander’s reaction, which kind of offended the mute.

“yeah, they’re big,” stan said gruffly. “big, but not obvious. you have to know they’re there.” sure enough, when he pointed out the pale marks along the side of his throat, on his wrist, and along his arm, one could clearly see he’d been in one hell of a brawl. he had more under his shirt, but he wasn’t about to strip for a patient. “he bit me during the day,” the guard stated without elaboration, as if that solved everything.

still from behind stan, xander stared disbelievingly at andromeda. they said he had problems. well, of course he did, but his problems stemmed from physical troubles, not the firm belief that he could absorb sunlight through his nails. … did the firm belief that he could absorb power from moonlight count?

though he was thrown off by her other words, xander gave a doggish laugh at andromeda’s statement regarding georg. even stan couldn’t resist, “oh, yeah. georg’s aggressive behavior is his way of overcompensating.” the look he gave the other guard was even more hateful than his words had been--he’d like to see someone strangle him.

the guard looked back at the young lady. again without xander’s contribution, he spoke to her, “about how much he wants to kill you but doesn’t at the same time.” xander objected in the form of a defensive yip. his guard glanced at him over his shoulder. stan’s firm brown eyes stated clearly that the patient shut up and be content. after all, he wasn’t the one being bombarded with conversation anymore.

[&Andromeda]

[I'm sorry this is so shitty.]

"Ah… During the day," she repeated, feeling devious. So if she tried to fight the wolfman now, since it was during the day, she didn’t have any risk of getting infected. Because as cool as it would be to be part wolf, it would interfere with her Big Plan. And don’t ask me what that might be. Ask her. She'd be glad to tell you. Besides not even I bothered asking her about the full details on her Big Plan. I think it has something to do with explosions.

Which you can obviously not accomplish when you're in a constant state of being hungry for BEEEEEEF.

The guard's attention snapped away from the girl and over to Stan at his words. "I vouldn't talk like dat if I vere you," he told the other. "You yourself overcompensate vith your rock composition. I'm sure you vouldn't vant me to say vhat for in front of dese people."

While the guard was busy annoying the heck out of the other guard, Andromeda slowly inched her way closer to the wolfman. He wanted to kill her but didn’t. Well. She'd make him decide quickly. She'd make him choose the right choice.

Suddenly, the blue-haired girl leaped at the brunet, crying a shrill war-cry. But before she could connect with the other, the German's long spindly yet strong hands were gripping her arms and pressing her face first into the floor.