"Cute is for kittens. And puppies." Sypha grumbles, puppies on the brain this morning. Cute is for harmless things...and those that choose to set harm aside for a select few. All right, fine, she can get behind that line of reasoning; possibly no one else alive has ever seen the way Alucard catches his tongue between his teeth when he's reading a particularly dense passage.

She's smothering laughter when he freezes up beside her, slow dhampiric heartbeat stuttering against her cheek. Frowning, Sypha peels away and catches him staring pensively at her shoulder.

She has other scars. Worse ones. Hell, Trevor's practically a topographical map of some alien hellscape, his hide's so marked up. These are things they accept about one another. Yet Alucard knows the history of these particular scars, and seeing his fingers splayed over the raised marks is...jarring in a way she hadn't expected.

"Are you sure you're all right?"