As soon as the door was cr(almost)ac(another inch)ked(yes!) open, the puppy squiggled inside.

His sliding across the floor was immediate and predictable, and altogether not-really-fun. The puppy went paw-scrabbling and butt-tumbling across the foyer and stopstopstopstop into the desk.

The receptionist gave a small, almost imperceptible, sigh. Then she smiled cordially across at Allison.

“Welcome to the Sanctuary. Is it your first time here?”

The foyer was spacious and tastefully decorated; there were unobtrusive abstract paintings on the walls, and a row of pamphlets along one wall. Full Circle Bookstore, Jacobs & Jacobs Security, Faust Pharmaceuticals. The smell of tonight’s cooking dinner drifted down the hallway from the nearby cafeteria; pasta and cows rolled into bite-sized balls. Yum! There were voices, too, somewhere more distant; just talking, unhurried, and maybe on the young side. The Sanctuary’s free room and board was becoming quite in vogue amongst out-of-the-closet college-going mutants. They’d pretty much taken over this floor, and the higher ones. You had to go to the lower levels to find the grumpy people-stabbers.

Lisa ignored the puppy as it got one leg two leg three back under itself, and went padding (slide-pad!) back to Allison’s side.

Bark wiggle bark!

They were home!

Allison watched the puppy with a look that very strongly questioned what she was doing and why she’d ever considered doing it before looking up at the receptionist. “Yeah? Sure. Is this thing yours? I sort of fell on it in the park.” She shifted slightly on her--very bruised feeling, by this point--feet; she hadn’t quite noticed them with the number of bruises she had everywhere else after so much climbing and falling, but standing still was making them all more obvious. The cuts, fortunately, had mostly faded once the salt and air killed the closest nerves. “On its tail, I mean. It said it lives here.”

The puppy reappeared by Allison’s side and she absently scratched around its ears, then waved the stick she was still carrying in front of its nose.

stick—!

“Oh no, he’s not mine.” Lisa managed to keep her tone entirely pleasant, and not at all revolted. This would have earned a snarky internal monologue from Calley but—

stick—!

“The Sanctuary is a shelter for mutants. Caleb is one of our residents,” the woman explained. Calley, for the record, hated that name. Who the heck called him—

stick—!

“Are you a mutant, Miss…?”

The puppy bouncebouncedanced below the joyous sliver of tree, his wagging tail giving no clue about how much weight her next answer carried around here.

They didn’t always kill humans that wandered in. Hadn’t happened much lately, that he could tell. Then again, most humans had learned to avoid the place, lately.

“Caleb, huh?” Allison echoed. “Is there somewhere Caleb should be, then, until he regains some of his common sense? If he will, I suppose.”

The question reminded Allison of why she’d been out in the park in the first place, and she stopped waving the stick for a moment as she focused on not death glaring the (as far as she could tell, innocent) woman. “More than enough to get all the reactions, and not enough to do anything about it,” she answered. It was as close to an entirely pleasant and not bitter answer as she could get. She waved the stick a few more times before dropping it for Caleb-the-puppy-menace. “And I’m--Lily.”

So maybe it was paranoia to use her middle name, but she was still (or again) too annoyed to care much. And when--(if)--when she got everything figured out, she’d really prefer to be able to just forget this particular day if possible. Not being Allison would help with that.

Lisa smiled indulgently at the idea of Caleb regaining his common sense. “If he’s bothering you, I could see to him,” she helpfully offered.

If the puppy had been paying attention, that line might have worried him, in an ominous threat sort of way. As it was—

the stick! it was! moving! jumptailwagjump!

The receptionist gave a sympathetic nod at the girl’s somewhat obscure reply. Working at the Sanctuary... it was not the first time she had heard such things. Lisa had been greeting mutants since before Lily knew she was a mutant.

“If you’re looking for a home, or even a place to come get away from it all for a few hours—please, make yourself welcome. The Sanctuary only takes in mutants. We leave prejudice outside these doors,” she said, with simple honesty.

Simple-but-not-complete honesty, the puppy could have added if the girl hadn’t—

dropped the stick! oh ho you are on my floor now. maulmaulmaul

“Would you like a tour?” The receptionist offered.

“As long as he doesn’t have access to any more busy streets I think he’s fine.” Allison skritched at the puppy’s ears again, when she could reach them.

...I suppose I am looking for a home now, aren’t I? Allison probably should have made that connection when the woman first referred to the Sanctuary as a shelter, but.... Sinnocent. Sinnocents don’t even demean themselves to live in suburbs without explicit extenuating circumstances. Shelters... needing a shelter... why do I care? I’ve never liked the name anyway. But.... It’s.... Not her world, not where she’d be able to blend in and escape notice. Even if it did seem to be where she was very quickly heading toward. Habit was enough to keep her from showing more surprise than some blinking widened eyes and going still, but there was still a pause before she was able to answer. “I... um, might. Thank you.”

She started to nod absently to the offer of a tour, her mind still running a bit too fast for her to actually catch any of the thoughts, before stopping. “Um... I, uh, might accidentally bleed on the floor, or something. I got some blisters recently.”

Lisa had risen from her desk when Lily accepted her offer of a tour. Tours: one of the only times Lisa was known to leave her station.

“If you’d like, we could stop by the infirmary, and get you some band-aids. I’m afraid our healer is off site right now, but we have nurses on staff.” Their healer was a unicorn, but he was on an emergency-call basis more so than a blistered-foot one. Lisa could have offered the girl shoes, as well... but she was already holding a pair, in her hands. The receptionist made no comment. Probably a mutation-related thing.

The puppy maybe noticed the ear scritching; his tail was certainly thump thumping against the floor. But all his concentration and efforts and dedication and focus were on the stickstickstick between his paws. Teething was serious work.

“That would be good, thanks.” The blisters were probably full of ingrained dirt and bits of bark and other similar infection-causing things which bandaids wouldn’t help with in the least, but Allison could always just clean them out later. She had plenty of bandaids at home, and even if she did stay here, she’d have to go back and at least get her stuff. She certainly wasn’t leaving it for her neighbors or landlord to take. As for the extra stuff that she’d been given by her parents or relatives and definitely didn’t want... well, someone else would. Who hadn’t been making her life miserable.

Okay, maybe she was being unfair to her neighbors. They were annoying, but all people were, and only a few of them were obviously prejudiced. She wasn’t really in the mood to be fair, though.

In anticipation of leaving, Allison leaned down and grabbed the stick. She was, at least, going to keep an eye on the puppy, even if she had to play tug with the stick for the entire tour. Caleb-puppy really didn’t seem like he would survive long if left by himself.

The stick! Was moving! Calley marched along, his teeth firmly entrenched, giving it a ferocious shake now and then. Just to let it know who was in charge.

The first stop on the tour became, by default, the infirmary. This was just off of the main hallway, and not a very long walk at all.

The nurses had rather the same opinion about Lily’s feet that she did: band-aids would not begin to cover it. Not after she’d run over streets, muddy trails, and... One of the nurses plucked a stuck leaf off the bottom of her foot.

Cleaning ensued, during which Lisa sat a discrete distance away. The puppy, knowing less about personal space, had wiggle-bark-insisted on jump (fail) running start (fail) whine being picked up, and set on the white-sheeted bed behind Lily while they worked. He settled down with his stick, content to gnaw it from every conceivable angle.

Click.

...The puppy’s ears perked. It gnawed absentmindedly, raising its head to look around. That noise. It was a familiar noise. It was a noise that maybe hadn’t even come from the outside; it was more of a physical sensation, like a... like a... like a click.

That meant.

That meant.

That meant.

He could get the heck out of this form before he forgot what that meant again.

The muddy gray Great Dane puppy shifted, rather abruptly, to muddy young Italian man. He spit the stick out. “Oh god, I’m never going to be clean again.”

Dogs. Puppy dogs. What the heck, society? Where was the appeal in that?

The young man was, of course, wearing the same amount of clothing as the puppy had been.

Allison did not like anyone touching her feet. Partly because they were sensitive--even the leaf removal ticked some, and cleaning the blisters was a combination of ohgodHURTS and nearly the same amount of tickling. And a few tingling and stinging and other miscellaneous sensations. Like absorbing or removing ink, really, only quite a bit more.

Still, nurses were trained, and while Allison didn’t particularly like them either--she’d spent more than a few days of school miserable because she refused to go home sick because that required going to the nurse first--they did, supposedly, know what they were doing. Even if she was fairly sure she knew more than enough to take care of running-related injuries, at least the ones she was prone to.

The nurses did, at the very least, have better supplies than Allison could legally get.

So she waited with a strained expression, trying not to wince and doing her best to ignore the nurses unless they said something she had to respond to. In the attempts to ignore both the nurses and the various sensations coming from her feet, she picked up Caleb-the-puppy-menace, and when he settled behind her to chew on the stick, reached back to scratch as close to his ears as she could get. Really more of his neck, but puppies generally liked all petting, and he didn’t seem to be complaining.

Then, of course, Caleb-the-puppy menace suddenly turned into Caleb-the-naked-boy.

Allison paused for a moment, then twisted to look at Caleb, removing her hand and eyeing him with exasperation. “I really should have known you’d do that, shouldn’t I? What is it with naked-boy-creating mutations that insists they have to occur around me?” She folded her arms and raised an eyebrow. “Can you at least say you have a slightly better self preservation instinct than before, Caleb-puppy?”

She didn’t seem surprised. She wasn’t screaming, or shoving him away. All in all, it was a rather blasé reaction to the fact he was sitting behind her, wearing mud and his birthday suit.

Calley discretely dragged the bed’s pillow into position, and tried not to feel somewhat miffed. That would be stupid. Blushing, likewise, would be stupid: it wasn’t like he wasn’t used to this.

His cheeks were warm for unrelated reasons.

“Okay, first? Not Caleb. Calley, yes. Caleb, no.” He gave Lisa a hard glare to accompany that. The receptionist, currently surveying her nails, took no notice. Pfft.

“And second? ...Yeah, much better now. With the self-preservation.” His eyes dodged away from hers, and found the stick on the floor.

Why was the stick on the floor? The stick shouldn’t be on the floor. It—

Oh god. His brain was forever tainted.

Allison smirked and raised an eyebrow. Teasing was always a good distraction from injured feet. And the boy was blushing. How cute. “Really? Are you sure? Caleb is much more name-like than Calley. Calley sounds like you made it up.”

Allison grinned more. “Well at least if I ever have to get you a present, I know exactly what to get you. A nice chew toy, wrapped in one of those orange safety vests.” She patted his head. “Try to avoid causing any more traffic accident, okay puppy?”

Calley sputtered and squirmed away from her hand. He was little reluctant to have his tush leave the bed, however, by default that his tush was exposed enough as it was. And she wasn’t exactly a modest young lady. Therefore, he stayed seated, with his pillow firmly guarding his front.

“Hey. Can I get some pants here?” One of the nurses gave him a hard look. “Please?” He added, somewhat less imperiously. The nurse left. Hopefully on a related note.

“You. You’re taking this a little too well.” Baby blue eyes staaared into hers. “Don’t. Pat. My head.”

Especially not when it was making his leg involuntarily twitch.

Allison burst out laughing at the boy’s assessment and attempted glare, and then broke down further at his demand to not have his head patted. After a few moments of halfhearted struggles to control the laughter Allison caught her breath and answered. “First, I’ve encountered much stranger things than naked boys. I’d be a bit more disturbed if you turned human and did have clothes on, really. Physics just should not work that way. ...Actually, most mutations have murdered physics long ago, but. Whatever. Spontaneously appearing clothing is just a bit too far.”

“...Also, I’m in a relatively cynical mood at the moment, so there’s not much I won’t react to with snarky comments if at all possible.” She leaned back, shifting a bit so she could see the boy without having to turn as much. “But your foot seems to enjoy it. And you’re just too cute not to pat. Are you sure you’re twenty one?” She did, however, ruffle his hair and then stop patting.

Calley Swartz, twenty-one, endured the girl’s laughter with all the dignity generally credited to his name. Likewise, the hair ruffling. Likewise, the condescending compliment and insinuation that he either did not look or act his age.

But when she shifted around to see him better, a line was crossed.

Calley aimed a shovey-poke at her nose that would, with any luck, make her turn her head away.

“Eyes. Not on the naked boy. I am not your visiting peep show.”

Or her new pet.