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Dorms Stairwell - Afternoon

Jake was barrelling down the stairs. Barrelling because he liked speed, and stairs were boring. He was jumping three, four stairs at once, trusting his hearing to pick up on anyone coming up the other way. It was near the landing of the first floor that it happened. It shouldn't have happened, he was a wolf and he was fast and balanced. He didn't fall. Just didn't.

It made no sense. Absolutely no sense for him to go lose his balance and miss the next stairs. And then he wasn't barrelling, but more... following gravity on his way to the ground.

[For one please, but the rest of the post is open in case you need the stairs.]

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Claudia wasn't barrelling or falling. She was just doing her usual stair climbing kind of thing and then OH HOLY CRAP there was Jacob falling down the stairs.

And because genius doesn't necessarily make one good at, say, common sense in split second reactions, her first thought was Maybe I can catch him.

If he'd been a telepath, he would have pointed out that he was 6"9 and she was... He wasn't sure what she was, but she was a lot smaller. Except that he wasn't a telepath and honestly, even if he were, he'd still only be thinking of where he was falling.

Which suddenly looked a lot more like Claudia than it looked like a floor. And then there was impact and he probably should have grabbed the railing than grab her, right? Probably, yes.

To be fair, Claudia was grabbing back -- although, hey, now she was falling. Thankfully not very far. She hit the floor with an almighty OOF!, flat on her back beneath the, yes, much larger Jacob.

It was something of an accomplishment that she managed a moment later to squeak out "not my best idea."

"You think?" he shot back, and he'd had a soft landing. Wasn't this supposed to be the other way around. "Are you okay?"

Which was a stupid question to ask when he was lying on top of her and... Crap. He quickly moved his weight to his elbows, having some distance to make sure she was in one piece.

"Oh, hey, air." Air was good. She liked air. She nodded. "Fine. I'm fine. You okay? You fell a lot further'n I did."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "I'm fine. Would have been fine if you hadn't done that," he pointed out, still studying her. "You didn't hit your head, did you?" Only half joking.

"Ha ha." She had, actually, but had managed to tense up enough to keep from smacking it very hard. "It was instinct. Bad instinct, apparently, but still. . . ." She trailed off as something in her mind clicked that oh hey, there was a tall, cute, shirtless boy on top of her.

This was new.

"Very bad instinct," he agreed with a laugh, almost launching into an explanation about how he healed fast. Except that something had changed and it made him shut up and, maybe he should move. Right?

He probably should. In, like, a moment or two. Claudia was still processing. She usually managed to do that a bit quicker, but, hey, small bump on the head, here.

"Bad, bad instinct." Should she say something about this? Do something? Oh crap, where was she putting her hands?

"Fight it next time," he caught a lock of her hair between his fingers, but let go the instant he realised what he was doing. "You sure you're okay?"

"Uh huh." Wow, that kinda sounded vapid. Claudia cleared her throat, mentally grabbing for the edges of her usual sarcasm. "I mean, other than my legs slowly going numb."

He really was rather a bit larger than she was.

He blinked as he finally processed what she was saying.

"Sorry!" and then he was up on his feet with much more speed and grace than someone who'd just fallen from the stairs was allowed to have. At least he was smart enough to hold out a hand to help her up.

Claudia decided the grace must be a wolf thing -- she definitely wasn't feeling all that speedy or graceful just now. She grabbed his hand to pull herself up.

"So what was with the falling, anyway? That doesn't really seem your style."

"I... missed a step," he frowned, not quite understanding how the hell that had happened here. "I haven't done anything like that since I... you know..."

He was going to hold on to her hand for a moment, just to make sure he really hadn't done any damage. He wasn't exactly the softest person to collide with.

He wasn't at that, but Claudia was surprisingly durable, the sort of girl who could survive falling from a zip line through the roof of a mystical house without so much as a scratch.

She wasn't objecting the hand holding just now, though.

"Huh." She looked over at the stairs. "Maybe they . . . moved?"

He'd rather she didn't fall from a zip line through a roof, though.

"Huh," he glanced back at the stairs. "Maybe," he said slowly, because it sounded better than him screwing up. "Do I need to get you to the clinic?"

Claudia shook her head. "I told you, I'm fine. I'm not even seeing two of you."

She wouldn't object to two of him.

"Though I admit, I'm not sure I want to go upstairs, now."

Jake grinned a little and squeezed her hand before he let go. He turned his back towards her and squatted down. "That's what elevators are for."

"Might be a better idea for both of us. Seriously, you didn't fall too far or anything, did you?" Yeah, okay, he was a werewolf, but he couldn't be totally invulnerable, right? She tapped at the bottom stair with her toe. It . . . did exactly what a you might think a stair would do when tapped with a toe. "It could be a one-off thing."

"Except that there aren't any?" he rubbed the back of his neck. "I meant I can give you a ride up, but..." he eyed the stairs. "Lemme check first."

Edited 2010-07-07 21:31 (UTC)

"Yeah, okay, maybe I should check? You're a lot more likely to actually be able to catch me if I end up falling."

He frowned up at her. "Yeah, but I can probably catch myself," he trailed off there and scowled. "In normal circumstances anyway."

Yeah okay, so he was sulking.

"You say that like I can't." She didn't know if she could, actually. It'd been a long time since she'd fallen down stairs.

He made a face and really, he had a lot of arguments as to why he was better suited for it. A lot, but he'd just squished her and it seemed like he owed her.

"Fine, I'll catch you," he relented with a wave towards the stairs.

Claudia nodded firmly, then started forward. She felt a little silly, tackling the stairs like they were full of snakes, but she'd feel worse if she went toppling over backwards.

She made it to the first landing without incident.

"Well, they seem solid enough."

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