Alec watches her approach with pale blue eyes as glossy and round as a doll's, his fingers flattened on the table over the sheets of sketches there.

He doesn't fight her when she seizes and shoves, sliding back so easily it suggests he's helping with the skid of his palm on the loose sheaves of paper and his pliant bend until he slams into the corner. He makes his first sound there, a wheezy, jolted exhale, and his mouth starts to open properly right before she slams her fist into his jaw.

His head snaps sideways in a bright sheet of dizzy hurt, stretching the web of damaged blood vessels that hasn't healed like he'd have expected it to, and he grabs at the back of her neck with a flailing hand to catch himself, or her.

"What the fuck was that for?" He blurts, jerking his head back to face her straight on, his fingers curled over the warm, taut column of her furiously rigid neck. Her whole face is like that, blaring fury on every channel, eyes dark and hot with the promise of his imminent ass-kicking.

She looks just like the pictures he was drawing, half of them scattered on the ground. She barely looks like them at all.

He's smiling, stupidly, jaw throbbing and a hint of iron in his mouth.