Meet me outside the Mansion, I want to introduce you to someone.

Twyla was back, and she'd missed a lot. Mostly unpleasant or irrelevant things, but there were some that were nice, and Gawain was more than willing to share them with his girlfriend.
Angua, for example.

The Lady Hellhound (who was growing more and more huge with an alarming speed) should be properly presented to the Lady Twyla.
Gawain still had minor problems with 'establishing the Alpha' inside their two-person pack, but after weeks of hard work he managed to somewhat tame the puppy from 'completely out of control' to 'definitely hyper'. That was a huge accomplishment.

Gawain was waiting for Twyla outside the front door; Angua was laying next to him on the ground, playing lazy in the summer heat. She had her leash on, just in case, and had a bow on her collar, signifying that she was indeed a lady. It was a small bow. Green, not pink. Duh.

Gawain waited patiently. The hellhound rolled onto her back.

Who was she meeting? Twyla had no idea. She was confused and also curious--mostly curious. Plenty could have happened while she was at dance camp and there were plenty of different kind of people that her significant other could have come in contact with. And, let’s face it, s/he had probably met all of those people while Twyla had been away--s/he was good at that. So...meeting...someone...who knows?

The blond assumed that if whatever meeting she was attending that day required special dress that it would have been noted, so she skipped down the stairs from the girl’s hall in a pair of her favorite daisy dukes and a pink tank top that she got from camp that said “Eat. Sleep. Dance.” on the front and “Ashby” on the back near the bottom. It was summer. It was hot. She’d wear what she could get away with. Her feet were bare, revealing tan lines from flip flops and toe rings. Blond and pink hair was piled on top of hear head in a messy bun.

She pushed the front door of the Mansion open with her shoulder and tried to peek around to get a glimpse of the person she was being introduced to, but apparently she was looking on the wrong side of the door. Once it was closed she caught sight of her boyfriend and--”Oh my gosh! You got a puppy!” The girl was down the stairs in a flash, holding her hand out to the dog for a sniff and smiling like a dope.

Twyla loved dogs. LOVED. Cats, not so much, but dogs...she’d grown up with them and they were familiar and loving and oh so freaking cute. Technically she’d grown up with cats too, but barn cats were so much meaner than your typical farm dog--and she had the scars on her hands to prove it.

>>”Oh my gosh! You got a puppy!”

Angua's ears snapped to attention to the new voice and she was on her paws in a moment, waiting to see the owner of the voice. Gawain smiled at his girlfriend.

"Twyla, meet Angua. She's part hellhound part mongrel, and I didn' really get her, it's more like she got me. Found her at a shelter and Ems decided she was the perfect pet for me."

Angua wagged her tail furiously, sniffing Twyla's hand before she licked her fingers in a friendly gesture. Then she turned around to jump on Gawain's knee, sniffing for the chew toy he had in his pocket. Gawain smirked as he fished out the headless sqeaky spider and handed it to Twyla. From that point on Angua lost all interest in her owner. Gawain took off the leash.

"I think you'll like each other."

“You’re such a cute girl, aren’t you?” The bow was a good indication of the dog’s gender. The blond patted her on the head before she was climbing up Gawain’s leg.

Angua was not a person--she was a dog and she was a very, very cute dog at that. Instantaneously Twyla was under the spell of the wet nose, wagging tail, and finger-licking tongue. Only babies and dogs could inspire in Twyla the reaction that came after she was introduced to the puppy and given a chew toy and a freed dog. She dropped to her knees, squeaking the toy crazily and made a series of mock growling noises as she was promptly attacked by the hell hound mix. These noises continued as the girl rolled on the grass with the puppy, roughing up her fur and playing tug with the headless spider toy.

And then she threw it.

Twyla giggled as she watched Angua lope in the grass after the prize. “Go get it girl, go get it.” She egged her on before laying on her back and looking up at Gawain, the dopey smile still on her face along with two spots of color high on her cheeks. “I think you’re right.” And then a pause as the puppy threw up the toy and caught it before barreling back towards the people. “How old is she?”

"Dunno, about three or four months, according to Ems" Gawain shrugged and smiled down at her "She still thinks she's the boss. I really need to work on that."

Angua returned, shaking the headless spider around furiously, making a series of sqeaky noises. After a few moments she realized the game was rather one-sided that way, and dropped the toy on the ground, wagging her tail, daring the two humans to try to pick it up.

"I've never had a pet before" Gawain admitted, making a half-hearted attempt at the spider; Angua growled and picked it up again, running a smal circle before she dropped it, this time closer to Twyla. "I'm makin' it up as we go. So far she recognizes Emmy as alpha female."

Angua crouched on her forepaws and wagged her tail as she watched Twyla's every movement.

Try to take it, human female. Try it. I dare you. Try.

“Aw, she’s just a baby.” Babytalk had started to creep into Twyla’s voice, making all her words rounder and more gooey. She smiled up at Gawain again for a moment, watching the clouds chase each other on the clear sky behind his head. “Babies can do what they want because they are so cuuuute.” A giggle escaped her lips after those words. Brown eyes then turned to the dog that was furiously playing with her toy. “As long as she’s potty trained--that’s all that matters.”

With a heaving sigh, the girl rolled over so she could make faces at the puppy that had decided to run back towards her owner and the girl on the ground. “Really?” Twyla had never not had a pet of some kind--excluding her time at the Mansion. It came with the territory on a dairy farm. The Ashby’s had always had a dog--either named Rover or Duke (due to her father claiming he’d never remember the dog’s name). As she watched Gawain attempt to get the toy she tried to think of any helpful advice. “Hmm...if she bites you--bite her back.” She laughed, but she’d seen it done for real.

“Puppies are fun--no worries,I’m sure you’ve got it down already.” A quick smile up at her boyfriend and then Twyla was back in play mode, mimicking Angua’s stance, sans wagging tail. A play growl emitted from her lips and then she lunged for the toy in the grass...sooooo close! She touched the squeaky toy for a moment before it was ripped from underneath her. Twyla landed with her head and shoulders mashed in the grass and her bottom in the air for a second before she fell over.

Mad giggling ensued after this and then the girl righted herself, managing to get herself in a crawling position before a small-ish big-ish mound of fur made her way back around from the circle she’d run around the pair of humans. Twyla managed to catch the squirming puppy this time and rolled over on the grass with the tail wagging form. As soon as she let the dog go she and Angua were wrestling on the ground, giving the mutant girl grass stains on her legs and causing her hair to fly free of the hairband. This went on for several minutes until Twyla, all tired out suddenly, flopped on the ground and played dead--causing the hell hound to curiously pause and sniff her hair.

>>“Hmm...if she bites you--bite her back.”

"I actually thought of that" Gawain nodded with all due seriousness "But I doubt she'd taste good."

That, and he didn't have the heart to bite a puppy. Not yet, anyway.

The young knight grinned as she watched his lady roll around and wrestle with the hellhound; Angua apparently was having the time of her puppy life. The spider lay forgotten in the grass as the two girls fought playfully. They both looked pretty adorable, especially together. Gawains smirked. Girls always had a soft spot for baby animals...

"I'm startin' to get jealous here" he chuckled, but was ignored by both parties. Twyla decided to play dead; Angua was baffled by the new situation, and sniffed around the girl, prodding her with her wet puppy nose. She even looked up at Gawain.

Make yourself useful, male human. She stopped being funny.

With a wicked grin on his lips, Gawain crouched down beside her, took a moment to prepare, then looked at the puppy.

"Watch and learn, Angua. This is how it's done." he adressed the pup, before he pounced on Twyla and started tickling her.

Yup. We totally look like reasonable, grown-up X-men. Totally.

Grass tickled her nose and Twyla fought the urge to sneeze. Also, wet noses tickled when they rubbed through your scalp and across your bare skin. Also, boyfriends tickled when they ATTACKED YOU IN THE GRASS AND STARTED A TICKLE WAR??? What? This was a sudden turn in events and Twyla was not prepared for it, luckily her brain snapped back from the tickle shock very quickly.

The girl rolled onto her back, giggling like mad and almost out of breath. Once she was in a more strategic position underneath the boy’s weight she used one of her recently acquired skills to wrap her legs around him, so she could try and flip him over. “Nooooo!” She screamed and screeched between giggles. This caused Angua to run around them and bark madly, shaking her tail the whole time and wondering why they weren’t letting her in on the play fighting.

Flailing wildly didn’t get her anywhere, and neither did the puppy running over to her and licking her forehead. She was being attacked by owner and dog. “Y...y....y...you are n..n..n..not fair. I’m so...” Giggle, giggle, giggle. “ticklish...and y..y...you’re notttt fair!” It was very very hard to think straight when she was laughing so hard there was so much going on.

Finally the girl attempted to flip the boy over so that they were both on their sides. If this worked she would try to use that position to pin him. if it didn’t...she was at his mercy. Hopefully it worked.

Whoever invented tickling must have been a friggin' genius. That had to go without saying.

Gawain laughed as they rolled around and kept tickling her; people who are ticklish usually don't realize just how funny they are when they try to wiggle free. It made the whole game all the more tempting.

Apparently, Angua thought so too. She went crazy, barking and jumping around them, and together they were loud enough to wake the dead. Twyla tried to flip him over and he fought back, until he felt familiar pointy teeth brush against his shoulder, accompanied by the usual fierce growl. Angua decided to take the matter into her own hand. In this case, jaws.

"Ow ow ow!" Gawain complained, rolling onto his back and trying to brush the puppy off, whose plan of joining the fun was to pull on his T-shirt with all her might, occasionally jumping as she pulled. Twyla, who managed to pin him (but only with the pup's help, mind you) was momentarily forgotten as he tried to brush the hellhound off. "Hey! Angua! No!"

Twyla’s sides hurt from laughing but she finally managed to get the upper hand. She was still laughing for a moment until she looked down at Gawain and realized why she’d gotten the upper hand. Apparently Angua was all for girl power or something because she’d helped Twyla flip her master.

...or may be she was just playing...It was probably just playing.

Also, it sounded like it hurt. Gawain tried to push the puppy off but her hold was determined--she thought he was playing back. The blond was off the boy in a moment and crouching near the puppy and the shoulder. Angua’s tail was wagging and when the mutant girl approached she shook her head and Gawain’s shoulder as if to show Twyla what she caught. In her best authoritative voice the girl barked at the over zealous puppy. “Angua, no. No. Let go. Drop it.” A hand came out and a pointing finger. “No. Drop it.”

And when that didn’t work--she was a puppy after all--Twyla stood up and used a trick she’d learned when they had Duke the Third, a hyper yellow Labrador with an affinity for stealing her work boots and playing tug with the clothes on the line. With two hands she forced Angua’s mouth open by forcing her fingers to push the skin of her jaw under the puppy’s pointy teeth. “Drop it. No biting.”

((OOC: My dog Sam used to take pillows and other things and we used that move to get them away from him. ^_^ He ate a SOCK once ...))

Gawain sat up once Twyla had managed to pry the puppy off him. He examined his shoulder with a frown; there were holes in his T-shirt, but the pointy little teeth failed to break the skin under it, so all in all, he was fine. He was still panting from the tickling match, and shook his head as he grinned at the girls.

"I'm gonna need to learn that trick" he noted "Will come in handy next time she wants to play tug with the bedsheets."

Angua was likely to play tug with anything that was physically possible to tug with puppy jaws. It was a baby thing. Hopefully.

"That's enough of biting for today" he told the puppy in a serious tone, flicking her lightly on the nose; Angua sneezed and shook her head, and returned to her sqeaky spider to sulk. She couldn't wrap her puppy mind around not being allowed to play the way the humans did.

"Thanks for coming to the rescue" he smiled at Twyla as they sat in the grass "I might have to stop tickling you as a sign of gratitude."

Angua didn’t much approve of being told off apparently, and Twyla could tell she was pouting by the way she stalked over to the spider toy and began gnawing on it mercilessly. “It’s a good trick--we used it on my dog Duke all the time when he was little--once you catch them with something it’s the easiest way to get it back.” Tugging back equaled playing in puppy speak--you didn’t tug.

“Oh, you had better stop with the tickling or...or...” With a sigh the girl dropped the attempt at a serious and commanding demeanor. “I can never figure out what comes over that.” She laughed for a moment before crawling over so she was sitting next to Gawain instead of in front of him. Laying her head on his shoulder she watched the puppy play by herself in the grass. “I missed you.” She murmured, nuzzling against him.

Thus far they had sort of gotten caught up--she’d explained her counseling duties a little bit and he had told her some of the things that had happened while she was away but neither of them had the other’s full story, just bits and pieces of it. “So, what’s the biggest thing to happen to you this summer? We haven’t really talked about anything much--fill me in.” The girl looked up at her boyfriend and gave him a slightly smirk-ish smile that was a remnant of her playfulness earlier. One of her hands reached down and grabbed his nearest one, locking their fingers together before she rubbed the back of his hand with her thumb in an absent minded motion.

Gawain smiled a soft smiled as his girlfriend snuggled up to him; Angua settled down a few feet away from them, intent on finishing off the sweaky toy once and for all.

"Missed you too" he murmured, kissing Twyla on the forehead. He really had.

>>“So, what’s the biggest thing to happen to you this summer? We haven’t really talked about anything much--fill me in.”

Oops.

Gawain was quiet for a few moments; there was no question he'd have to come up with the details sooner or later, she would find out anyway and it was better if she found out from him instead of... well, the alternative.
He decided to settle for the Reader's Digest version for now.

"Well, let's see..." he mused, glancing at her "As an adopted Lupin, I got to know Ems' big sister, an' I'm still alive, so that went well. Mutant spiders ran over the school. I met a dinosaur in the living room. I got Angua. What else?... Oh, yeah. I got arrested."

Ta-daaaa.

"It was totally not my fault, by the way, some guys decided to pick on us in a sandwich bar just 'cuz we're mutants, and the police came and hauled us off into jail. Me, actually. The other guy got away. His name's Ilari, he said he know you. An' I owe him a shiner, for various reasons."

Gawain smirked, and lifted her hand to kiss it.
There was only one event missing from his little story. And he had no intention to tell her about that anytime soon. She didn't need to know how deep a mess he was in, for playing with fire. Fire, in this case, meant a werewof serial killer. Of course.

"So, how was your summer?"

Twyla’s post snuggle smile remained on her face as Gawain ‘filled her in’...it was more like the cliff notes version but at least now she had specific things to ask about, like how a dinosaur could fit in the living room and HOW THE HELL DID SHE LEAVE FOR A FEW WEEKS AND COME BACK WITH HER BOYFRIEND A CRIMINAL? HOW THE HELL DID THAT HAPPEN!? And then the smile died and decomposed into a frown.

No, there would be no kissing of the hands and distracting and detracting from an arrest record. No, she would not go for that--not at all. With a wrench the girl pulled her arm away and in another swift movement she was standing in the grass, hands on hips, staring angrily (or it may have been a worrisome expression, in these situations it is so hard to tell with her) down at Gawain. “My summer was just fine until I found out that I was dating a criminal. I mean, I spent most of it at a camp full of little, innocent, girls where I tried my best to set a good example and to not worry about what my boyfriend was off doing--apparently I should have been doing more of that!” By the end of her little outburst Twyla was yelling, it had started as an excited conversational tone, honest.

“I swear, only you would walk into a freaking sandwich bar and get dragged to jail because of it! And Ilari...you met Ilari?” For some reason that was too strange to handle and the girl stood there dazed for a moment before she caught her train of angry-worry-thought. “I can’t believe you...” Her tone was quieter now as she shook her head. And then, because she was still in shock and because it figured that something like that would happen to the Morris kid, Twyla began to laugh. She stood there, looking down at him, shaking her head, and she laughed.

“Wow...” Giggle. Chuckle. Chortle. Guffaw. Snicker. Wait...

ATTACK! It was Twyla’s turn to tackle her boyfriend, only not for tickling purposes. She landed on him with the intent of getting information from him--she used her best moves from her classes with Sam and got herself sitting on his chest with his arms pinned with her own. “Just tell me that nothing unfixable happened and you’re not some convict who’s running from the law. Tell me that whatever it was got fixed or is going to be fixed.” The laughing face was gone, replaced by a pleading one...something wasn’t right but she had no idea what. Call it female intuition.

>>“My summer was just fine until I found out that I was dating a criminal..."

Gawain winced as she started yelling, and remained sitting on the grass, looking up at her with the eyes of a puppy dog who just got kicked. Angua looked up with renewed interest, but when she saw that the yelling was not directed at her, she returned to her chewing activities.

"Look, I'm not a cr... ooompfh."

Next thing he knew, she was on top of him. How the heck did that happen? She misses our on long weeks of hard training, and then she comes home and tackles him just like that. What the heck did they teach in that camp?!

>>“Just tell me that nothing unfixable happened and you’re not some convict who’s running from the law. Tell me that whatever it was got fixed or is going to be fixed.”

He looked up at her, and sighed.
(It was also a very interesting perspective, but now was not the time to think thoughts like that)

"I am not runnin' from the law." he repeated "Sam took care of it. Now I gotta jump really high whenever he says so, but it's all fixed. I promise."

He looked up into her eyes, and wished the pleading look would disappear; he was starting to feel more and more guilty by the minute for not telling her everything.
I should tell her. I should really tell her. I should tell her right now.

I can't tell her.